Obama continues to trash Bush in words — but his actions speak louder.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Friday, May 29, 2009
Last July I wrote a column entitled “Barack W. Bush” outlining how candidate Barack Obama was strangely emulating Bush policies — even as he was trashing the president.
Nearly a year later, President Obama has continued that schizophrenia, criticizing Bush while keeping in place Bush’s anti-terrorism protocols. The result of this Bush Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is that, thanks to Obama, history will soon begin reassessing George W. Bush’s presidency in a more positive light.
Why? Because the more Obama feels compelled to trash Bush, the more he draws attention to the fact that he is copying — or in some cases falling short of — his predecessor. He seems to wish to frame his presidency in terms of the Bush years, even though such constant evocation is serving his predecessor more than it is serving Obama himself.
For eight years conservatives whined — and Democrats railed — at the Bush deficits. In the aggregate over eight years they exceeded $2 trillion. The administration’s excuses — the 2000 recession; 9/11; two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq; Katrina; and two massive new programs, No Child Left Behind and Medicare Prescription Drug — fell on deaf ears.
Between 2001 and 2008 we still spoke of annual budget shortfalls in billions of dollars. But an early effect of the Obama administration is that it has already made the Bush administration’s reckless spending seem almost incidental. In the first 100 days of this government we have learned to speak of yearly red ink in terms of Obama’s trillions, not Bush’s mere billions. Indeed, compared to Obama, Bush looks like a fiscal conservative.
Another complaint was the so-called culture of corruption in the Republican Congress — and the inability, or unwillingness, of the Bush administration to address party impropriety. Jack Abramoff, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, and Mark Foley were each involved in some sort of fiscal or moral turpitude that — according to critics — was never convincingly condemned by the Bush administration.
But compared to some of the present Democratic headline-makers, those were relatively small potatoes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has slurred the CIA and accused it of habitually lying to Congress. Rep. Charles Rangel has not paid his income taxes fully, and has improperly used his influence to lobby corporations for donations; he has also violated rent-stabilization laws in New York. Sen. Chris Dodd has received discounts and gifts from shady corporate insiders in clear quid-pro-quo influence peddling. Rep. Barney Frank got campaign money from Fannie Mae before it imploded, despite the fact he was charged with regulating the quasi-governmental agency — which at one time hired his boyfriend as a top executive. Former Rep. William Jefferson, an outright crook, is about to go on trial in federal court.
As for other prominent Democrats, the sins of Blago and Eliot Spitzer bordered on buffoonery. A series of Obama cabinet nominations — Daschle, Geithner, Richardson, Solis — were marred by admissions of tax evasion and the suspicion of scandal. In other words, should either the Democratic leadership or President Obama now rail about a “Culture of Corruption” — and neither unfortunately has — the public would naturally assume a reference to Democratic misdeeds.
For the last eight years, a sort of parlor game has been played listing the various ways the Bush anti-terror policies supposedly destroyed the Constitution. Liberal opponents — prominent among them Sen. Barack Obama — railed against elements of the Patriot Act, military tribunals, rendition, wiretaps, email intercepts, and Predator drone attacks. These supposedly unnecessary measures, plus Bush’s policies in postwar Iraq, were said to be proof, on Bush’s part, of either paranoia or blatantly partisan efforts to scare us into supporting his unconstitutional agenda.
Now, thanks to President Obama, the verdict is in: All of the Bush protocols turned out to reflect a bipartisan national consensus that has kept us safe from another 9/11-style attack.
How do we know that?
Because President Obama — despite earlier opposition and current name changes and nuancing — has kept intact the entire Bush anti-terrorism program. Apparently President Obama has kept these protocols because he suspects that they help to explain why his first few months in office have been free of successful terrorist attacks — witness the foiled plot earlier this month to murder Jews in New York City and shoot down military planes in upstate New York.
There are only two exceptions to Obama’s new Bushism. Both are revealing. The president says he wishes to shut down Guantanamo in a year, after careful study. But so far no one has come up with an alternative plan for dealing with out-of-uniform terrorists caught on the battlefield plotting harm to the United States. That’s why Obama himself did not close the facility immediately upon entering office, and why the Democratic Congress has just cut off funding to close it. So we are left with the weird paradox that Obama hit hard against his predecessor for opening Guantanamo, while members of his own party are doing their best to keep it open.
Obama says he opposes waterboarding and calls it torture. Many of us tend to agree. But despite the partisan rhetoric of endemic cruelty, we now learn that the tactic was used on only three extraordinarily bad detainees.
Furthermore, the administration that disclosed the once-classified technique to the public now refuses to elaborate on whether valuable information that saved lives emerged from such coerced interrogations.
Meanwhile, liberal congressional icons like Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi are on record as being briefed about the technique — and, by their apparent silence as overseers, de facto approving it. Senator Schumer, remember, all but said that we must not rule out the resort to torture in the case of terrorist suspects.
Mini-histories have already been written blasting Bush for unprecedented deficits, for being in bed with a sometimes corrupt Republican Congress, and for weakening our civil liberties. Now the historians will have to begin over again and see Bush as a mere prelude to a far more profligate, and ethically suspect, administration.
More important, President Bush bequeathed to President Obama a successful anti-terrorism template that the latter has embraced and believes will keep the nation safe for another eight years. And, oddly, we are the more certain that is what he believes, the more a now obsessive-compulsive President Obama attacks none other than former President Bush.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Cheney an Unlikely Beacon for Conservatives
It turns out that substance is a good counterpunch to style.
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, May 29, 2009
It’s a lovely thing when the conventional wisdom proves to be so spectacularly wrong. The entire Democratic party, not to mention the media establishment, simply took as a given that suave, charming, effulgent, numinous president Barack Obama would mop the floor with grumpy, truculent, sardonic former vice-president Dick Cheney. And yet, on almost every issue he has championed since he left office, Cheney has won the debate or at least put the White House on the defensive. From the closing of Gitmo and the placement of terrorists in domestic prisons, to the release of the torture memos and the aborted release of prisoner-abuse photos, Cheney holds the higher ground politically, or in the polls, or both.
Many liberals who take it on faith that Cheney represents all that is evil, cruel, and unhip about the Republican party, not to mention carbon-based life forms, are loath to give him even an ounce of credit for his success. That Obama is backpedaling or off-balance on so many fronts, they say, is at best circumstantial evidence that Cheney is having any effect. Well, you know, Thoreau was right: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” The trout in Obama’s milk is the trout fisherman from Casper, Wyo.
There are profound lessons to be learned here. An easy one is that the Bush policies Democrats relentlessly demonized were hardly as extreme, politically or morally, as they alleged. If Bush’s anti-terror policies were half as bad as Obama & Co. claimed, the American people and Congress would reject them all wholesale, and Cheney’s arguments would sound like the ravings of a madman. That hasn’t happened.
But the more important lesson, at least for conservatives and Republicans, is that arguments matter. If personalities and politics alone drove the issues, then of course flannel Cheney would lose against silky Obama. But it turns out that substance is a good counterpunch to style.
That’s worth remembering as the GOP figures out how to deal with Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Conservatives think she’s wrong on the merits, and even though they will almost surely fail to block her confirmation, there’s no reason for them to be ashamed of their stance. If liberals want to call conservatives racist or sexist for opposing the first Hispanic female nominee to the court, conservatives should patiently explain that they wouldn’t want to insult her with the soft bigotry of low expectations. After all, if Sotomayor were a rich white male with exactly the same views and philosophies, you can be sure conservatives would oppose her just as vigorously.
But the lesson runs deeper than the impending Sotomayor battle. Conventional wisdom also tells us that the GOP needs to become more inclusive. On this score the conventional wisdom is right, if by “inclusive” you mean getting more people to join the party and vote Republican. But many people mean something else by “inclusive.” They think the GOP needs to become the Pepsi to the Democrats’ Coca-Cola, indistinguishable save for small matters of taste and marketing.
The conventional wisdom holds that conservatism is in trouble because the GOP is in trouble. But the two are not one and the same. Indeed, the GOP’s conservative principles aren’t necessarily the main reason for its unpopularity. Arguably, Republicans’ failure to adhere to their principles when in power hurt them more. The most recent Pew Research Center report on “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes” finds that 37 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, while only 19 percent describe themselves as liberal. And conservative principles are still competitive, even after eight years of Bush, a staggering recession, and the most popular Democratic president in nearly a half-century. A majority of respondents say the “federal government controls too much of our daily lives” and that “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”
Obviously, the GOP is not in an enviable position. But conservatives have been in worse shape countless times before. What they have done each and every time is argue their way forward. Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich each mounted conservative victories by making arguments for their cause.
The cliché is that politics is about “addition,” and the GOP needs to add more Hispanics, or gays, or women to its coalition, as if such descriptors define people more than their individual aspirations. Republicans will never win that fight, nor should they try to out-bean-count the Democrats. Persuasion should trump the pandering of “addition.” Conservatives must argue why they are right, not endlessly apologize for their alleged wrongs.
And the surest way to lose that argument is by failing to even try to make it. If anything, conservatives owe Dick Cheney gratitude for demonstrating that.
By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, May 29, 2009
It’s a lovely thing when the conventional wisdom proves to be so spectacularly wrong. The entire Democratic party, not to mention the media establishment, simply took as a given that suave, charming, effulgent, numinous president Barack Obama would mop the floor with grumpy, truculent, sardonic former vice-president Dick Cheney. And yet, on almost every issue he has championed since he left office, Cheney has won the debate or at least put the White House on the defensive. From the closing of Gitmo and the placement of terrorists in domestic prisons, to the release of the torture memos and the aborted release of prisoner-abuse photos, Cheney holds the higher ground politically, or in the polls, or both.
Many liberals who take it on faith that Cheney represents all that is evil, cruel, and unhip about the Republican party, not to mention carbon-based life forms, are loath to give him even an ounce of credit for his success. That Obama is backpedaling or off-balance on so many fronts, they say, is at best circumstantial evidence that Cheney is having any effect. Well, you know, Thoreau was right: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.” The trout in Obama’s milk is the trout fisherman from Casper, Wyo.
There are profound lessons to be learned here. An easy one is that the Bush policies Democrats relentlessly demonized were hardly as extreme, politically or morally, as they alleged. If Bush’s anti-terror policies were half as bad as Obama & Co. claimed, the American people and Congress would reject them all wholesale, and Cheney’s arguments would sound like the ravings of a madman. That hasn’t happened.
But the more important lesson, at least for conservatives and Republicans, is that arguments matter. If personalities and politics alone drove the issues, then of course flannel Cheney would lose against silky Obama. But it turns out that substance is a good counterpunch to style.
That’s worth remembering as the GOP figures out how to deal with Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Conservatives think she’s wrong on the merits, and even though they will almost surely fail to block her confirmation, there’s no reason for them to be ashamed of their stance. If liberals want to call conservatives racist or sexist for opposing the first Hispanic female nominee to the court, conservatives should patiently explain that they wouldn’t want to insult her with the soft bigotry of low expectations. After all, if Sotomayor were a rich white male with exactly the same views and philosophies, you can be sure conservatives would oppose her just as vigorously.
But the lesson runs deeper than the impending Sotomayor battle. Conventional wisdom also tells us that the GOP needs to become more inclusive. On this score the conventional wisdom is right, if by “inclusive” you mean getting more people to join the party and vote Republican. But many people mean something else by “inclusive.” They think the GOP needs to become the Pepsi to the Democrats’ Coca-Cola, indistinguishable save for small matters of taste and marketing.
The conventional wisdom holds that conservatism is in trouble because the GOP is in trouble. But the two are not one and the same. Indeed, the GOP’s conservative principles aren’t necessarily the main reason for its unpopularity. Arguably, Republicans’ failure to adhere to their principles when in power hurt them more. The most recent Pew Research Center report on “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes” finds that 37 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, while only 19 percent describe themselves as liberal. And conservative principles are still competitive, even after eight years of Bush, a staggering recession, and the most popular Democratic president in nearly a half-century. A majority of respondents say the “federal government controls too much of our daily lives” and that “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”
Obviously, the GOP is not in an enviable position. But conservatives have been in worse shape countless times before. What they have done each and every time is argue their way forward. Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich each mounted conservative victories by making arguments for their cause.
The cliché is that politics is about “addition,” and the GOP needs to add more Hispanics, or gays, or women to its coalition, as if such descriptors define people more than their individual aspirations. Republicans will never win that fight, nor should they try to out-bean-count the Democrats. Persuasion should trump the pandering of “addition.” Conservatives must argue why they are right, not endlessly apologize for their alleged wrongs.
And the surest way to lose that argument is by failing to even try to make it. If anything, conservatives owe Dick Cheney gratitude for demonstrating that.
Sotomayor's Aversion to Impartiality
Steve Chapman
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The chief blot on Sonia Sotomayor's otherwise stellar professional record is a comment she made deprecating the capabilities of any judge lacking a Y chromosome and Iberian ancestry.
"I would hope," she said in a 2001 lecture on law and multicultural diversity, "that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
The question for her supporters is: How do we spin that? It's not sufficient grounds to reject her nomination, given her excellent credentials. But it's still an embarrassment.
One possible way to handle it is a mea culpa by the nominee. She could say, "Let me explain what I meant to say," or "I used to believe that, but I now realize I was mistaken," or "Oh, man -- what was I thinking?" Any of those tactics would defuse the controversy and allow the debate to proceed to a topic more advantageous to her.
Maybe when she gets to her confirmation hearing, Sotomayor will disavow the remark. But her supporters are taking another tack. They say this criticism is unfair, because critics have taken the quotation out of context and grossly distorted her meaning.
Sotomayor, they point out, also said judges "must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate."
Her allies have a point. Anyone who reads the whole speech will indeed find that her comment wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was worse.
What is clear from the full text is that her claim to superior insight was not a casual aside or an exercise in devil's advocacy. On the contrary, it fit neatly into her overall argument, which was that the law can only benefit from the experiences and biases that female and minority judges bring with them.
She clearly thinks impartiality is overrated. "The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others," she declared, a bit dismissively. She doesn't seem to think it's terribly important to try to meet the aspiration.
That's apparent from the context. She said, "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge (Miriam) Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
In more succinct terms: Sotomayor does not mind, and may even prefer, that the outcomes of cases are affected by the gender and race of the judge (at least when the judge is not white and male).
Judge Cedarbaum, she noted, "believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law." Does Sotomayor share that noble sentiment? Not entirely.
"Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society" (my emphasis). Which comes alarmingly close to saying: It's impossible for female and minority judges to overcome their biases, and it would be a shame if they did.
Underlying all this is Sotomayor's suspicion that white male judges are bound to treat minorities and women unfairly. She pointed out that "wise men like (Justice) Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice (Benjamin) Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case."
Sotomayor didn't seem to notice the damage she had just done to her own argument. The Supreme Court that upheld that gender discrimination claim was composed of nine men -- just as the court that ordered an end to racial segregation in public schools was all-white.
The court that upheld affirmative action by public universities had only one black member. There were no women on the court that found constitutional protection for abortion rights.
Right or wrong, the justices in those cases clearly strove to put aside their narrow personal interests and uphold the fundamental principles of the Constitution as best they could. Most Americans, most lawyers and most judges, I would guess, believe that's exactly what judges should do. Why doesn't Sonia Sotomayor?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
The chief blot on Sonia Sotomayor's otherwise stellar professional record is a comment she made deprecating the capabilities of any judge lacking a Y chromosome and Iberian ancestry.
"I would hope," she said in a 2001 lecture on law and multicultural diversity, "that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
The question for her supporters is: How do we spin that? It's not sufficient grounds to reject her nomination, given her excellent credentials. But it's still an embarrassment.
One possible way to handle it is a mea culpa by the nominee. She could say, "Let me explain what I meant to say," or "I used to believe that, but I now realize I was mistaken," or "Oh, man -- what was I thinking?" Any of those tactics would defuse the controversy and allow the debate to proceed to a topic more advantageous to her.
Maybe when she gets to her confirmation hearing, Sotomayor will disavow the remark. But her supporters are taking another tack. They say this criticism is unfair, because critics have taken the quotation out of context and grossly distorted her meaning.
Sotomayor, they point out, also said judges "must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate."
Her allies have a point. Anyone who reads the whole speech will indeed find that her comment wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was worse.
What is clear from the full text is that her claim to superior insight was not a casual aside or an exercise in devil's advocacy. On the contrary, it fit neatly into her overall argument, which was that the law can only benefit from the experiences and biases that female and minority judges bring with them.
She clearly thinks impartiality is overrated. "The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others," she declared, a bit dismissively. She doesn't seem to think it's terribly important to try to meet the aspiration.
That's apparent from the context. She said, "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge (Miriam) Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
In more succinct terms: Sotomayor does not mind, and may even prefer, that the outcomes of cases are affected by the gender and race of the judge (at least when the judge is not white and male).
Judge Cedarbaum, she noted, "believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law." Does Sotomayor share that noble sentiment? Not entirely.
"Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society" (my emphasis). Which comes alarmingly close to saying: It's impossible for female and minority judges to overcome their biases, and it would be a shame if they did.
Underlying all this is Sotomayor's suspicion that white male judges are bound to treat minorities and women unfairly. She pointed out that "wise men like (Justice) Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice (Benjamin) Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case."
Sotomayor didn't seem to notice the damage she had just done to her own argument. The Supreme Court that upheld that gender discrimination claim was composed of nine men -- just as the court that ordered an end to racial segregation in public schools was all-white.
The court that upheld affirmative action by public universities had only one black member. There were no women on the court that found constitutional protection for abortion rights.
Right or wrong, the justices in those cases clearly strove to put aside their narrow personal interests and uphold the fundamental principles of the Constitution as best they could. Most Americans, most lawyers and most judges, I would guess, believe that's exactly what judges should do. Why doesn't Sonia Sotomayor?
Why Obama is losing The Third Jihad
Kevin McCullough
Sunday, May 31, 2009
As I pen these words not more than sixty miles north of where I sit, a radical Islamist breeding ground is churning out hate, weapons training, and radical Wahabi indoctrination. To date President Barack Obama's administration has done zero about it.
In fact as you spend today doing whatever pleases you, it is imperative for you to understand that that there are thirty additional compounds to this one that are spread throughout the nation in blue states like New York and red states like Virginia. And in each place the residents have been observed or overheard testing explosives, firing weapons, and engaged in the same type of activities as what those who have abandoned Islamberg have confessed to.
Cutting to the chase let it be plainly said, there are thirty-one bases of operation in which strongly questionable use of weapons and militant jihad are being taught and trained, here on U.S. soil. They are actively supplying clerics to serve in the prison chaplain systems across several states, and in many instances those who do are also actively recruiting new members for the future Islamic State of North America. Their stated goal on one of the chaplain's websites is for that state to be in existence by 2050.
Since the compound, known as Islamberg, has more than 200 residents, and since it took less than ten percent of that to kill over 3000 Americans on 9.11.2001, we would assume our nation's authorities would shut it down.
Of course the whole "shutting entire compounds down" thing is a bit tricky for this President. On the campaign trail he pledged to do as much for Gitmo, a base he now supposedly controls. Yet increasingly he appears to be leaning towards leaving it open for some time to come.
I guess it would also be of comfort for the administration to square with the American people that Islamberg is owned and operated by Sheikh Mubarik Ali Hasmi Shah Gilani a known terrorist who currently funds and owns all 31 of the camps known as "Al Fuqra." The Pakistani terror leader remains out of the nation, but regularly provides instructions for those who operate these bases as to how to combat the attempt by mere local law enforcement, to turn our laws on their ears, and to insure that they never gain legal access to the compounds.
Federal authorities have yet to address these compounds with any serious attention.
It is not surprising then that the makers of a new film "The Third Jihad" are so obsessed with letting Americans know what is happening, behind our backs, down the streets, and in the open rural areas we love. Enemies of America are seeking our destruction.
The compounds however present only part of the challenge. A much larger one has been unearthed by the FBI but little has yet been done to combat it.
Through a series of violent protests in Western Europe over things like the Allah cartoons, journalists, media outlets, and eventually whole government systems began to make compromises to the protestors. In each case free speech was allowed to have limitations placed upon it, and in some cases such as Great Britain justice in muslim neighborhoods is being wholesale exported to Sharia law systems.
In America while hundreds of thousands of muslims would argue they have no desire to see Sharia law become the way of American society, nearly 25% of those same muslims say they do believe that taking the life of the innocent is allowable to perform the will of Allah--their bastardized substitution for the God of the Bible. And honor killings are on a sharp increase amongst American muslim families.
"The Third Jihad" is an important film because the host of the documentary is an American muslim, and one of the extremely few who has had the courage to speak out against the violent radical elements in his faith community in America.
Every American needs to understand the patient persistence with which the Islamic State of North America is being built with. Every American needs to understand that the U.S. government is at this moment asleep to the concern of the problem that is festering here.
And with President Obama's plan to cut intelligence, defense, and national security spending we've a very real reason to be concerned.
This is especially true given the boldness with which others such as the tyrannical terrorists in Iran, and the crazed and extremely dangerous nuclear power of North Korea have dusted any concern with America aside while Obama is at the helm.
In my city just two weeks ago four men who had been recruited by elements of Sheikh Gilani's crew were caught attempting to place what they believed was a dangerous amount of C4 and a missile they wished to use to bring down an airliner, and blow up a prominent Jewish landmark.
The threat is real friends, "The Third Jihad" documents it all, and every American should view it and pass on their copy to their neighbor. (www.TheThirdJihad.com)
Perhaps one could even make its way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who just this week at a burger joint learned about a whole wing of intelligence operations that he had never heard of before.
Trust me, our enemies knew who they were, why didn't President Obama?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
As I pen these words not more than sixty miles north of where I sit, a radical Islamist breeding ground is churning out hate, weapons training, and radical Wahabi indoctrination. To date President Barack Obama's administration has done zero about it.
In fact as you spend today doing whatever pleases you, it is imperative for you to understand that that there are thirty additional compounds to this one that are spread throughout the nation in blue states like New York and red states like Virginia. And in each place the residents have been observed or overheard testing explosives, firing weapons, and engaged in the same type of activities as what those who have abandoned Islamberg have confessed to.
Cutting to the chase let it be plainly said, there are thirty-one bases of operation in which strongly questionable use of weapons and militant jihad are being taught and trained, here on U.S. soil. They are actively supplying clerics to serve in the prison chaplain systems across several states, and in many instances those who do are also actively recruiting new members for the future Islamic State of North America. Their stated goal on one of the chaplain's websites is for that state to be in existence by 2050.
Since the compound, known as Islamberg, has more than 200 residents, and since it took less than ten percent of that to kill over 3000 Americans on 9.11.2001, we would assume our nation's authorities would shut it down.
Of course the whole "shutting entire compounds down" thing is a bit tricky for this President. On the campaign trail he pledged to do as much for Gitmo, a base he now supposedly controls. Yet increasingly he appears to be leaning towards leaving it open for some time to come.
I guess it would also be of comfort for the administration to square with the American people that Islamberg is owned and operated by Sheikh Mubarik Ali Hasmi Shah Gilani a known terrorist who currently funds and owns all 31 of the camps known as "Al Fuqra." The Pakistani terror leader remains out of the nation, but regularly provides instructions for those who operate these bases as to how to combat the attempt by mere local law enforcement, to turn our laws on their ears, and to insure that they never gain legal access to the compounds.
Federal authorities have yet to address these compounds with any serious attention.
It is not surprising then that the makers of a new film "The Third Jihad" are so obsessed with letting Americans know what is happening, behind our backs, down the streets, and in the open rural areas we love. Enemies of America are seeking our destruction.
The compounds however present only part of the challenge. A much larger one has been unearthed by the FBI but little has yet been done to combat it.
Through a series of violent protests in Western Europe over things like the Allah cartoons, journalists, media outlets, and eventually whole government systems began to make compromises to the protestors. In each case free speech was allowed to have limitations placed upon it, and in some cases such as Great Britain justice in muslim neighborhoods is being wholesale exported to Sharia law systems.
In America while hundreds of thousands of muslims would argue they have no desire to see Sharia law become the way of American society, nearly 25% of those same muslims say they do believe that taking the life of the innocent is allowable to perform the will of Allah--their bastardized substitution for the God of the Bible. And honor killings are on a sharp increase amongst American muslim families.
"The Third Jihad" is an important film because the host of the documentary is an American muslim, and one of the extremely few who has had the courage to speak out against the violent radical elements in his faith community in America.
Every American needs to understand the patient persistence with which the Islamic State of North America is being built with. Every American needs to understand that the U.S. government is at this moment asleep to the concern of the problem that is festering here.
And with President Obama's plan to cut intelligence, defense, and national security spending we've a very real reason to be concerned.
This is especially true given the boldness with which others such as the tyrannical terrorists in Iran, and the crazed and extremely dangerous nuclear power of North Korea have dusted any concern with America aside while Obama is at the helm.
In my city just two weeks ago four men who had been recruited by elements of Sheikh Gilani's crew were caught attempting to place what they believed was a dangerous amount of C4 and a missile they wished to use to bring down an airliner, and blow up a prominent Jewish landmark.
The threat is real friends, "The Third Jihad" documents it all, and every American should view it and pass on their copy to their neighbor. (www.TheThirdJihad.com)
Perhaps one could even make its way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who just this week at a burger joint learned about a whole wing of intelligence operations that he had never heard of before.
Trust me, our enemies knew who they were, why didn't President Obama?
This "American Freedom Thing" Makes People Uncomfortable
Austin Hill
Sunday, May 31, 2009
American freedom is spiraling out of control, and it needs to be reigned-in.
Right?
I don’t know any American who would actually say such a thing - at least not in so many words. But far too many Americans have succumbed to a certain “sickness” these days. It’s the perverse notion that their lives will be improved, and that they will be made to “feel better,” when the freedom of other American individuals and groups is diminished.
This nonsense not only makes for some nasty politics, but is also shaping the ways in which many Americans view the world around them.
Ever since the release of my first book “White House Confidential - The Little Book Of Weird Presidential History,” I frequently get asked if our modern-day politics are the nastiest in American history. The answer is clearly “no.” In terms of nasty behavior among politicians and candidates, things have been far uglier in previous generations.
For example, most Americans would be shocked to learn that a former U.S. Vice President (Aaron Burr) once got in such a heated argument with the former U.S. Treasury Secretary (Alexander Hamilton), that the V.P. ended up shooting and murdering the Treasury Secretary. And it may be “news” to some that while campaigning for re-election in 1828, President John Quincy Adams was so ugly in his attacks on his opponent‘s wife, Rachel Jackson became emotionally debilitated during the campaign, and died from a heart attack days after Andrew Jackson won the election (she was, quite literally, buried in the dress that she intended to wear at her husband’s inauguration).
But those are examples of politicians and candidates beating-up on each other. Today, private American citizens want to do damage to other private American citizens, and politicians are all-too- happy to “play” us for all we’re worth.
Our current President ran an incredibly successful campaign, driven in no small part by his promises of punishing certain groups of Americans. “Rich people,” “overpaid corporate executives,” “the oil companies,” and “pharmaceutical manufacturers” were all targets of Barack Obama’s vicious attacks.
And his message to the rest of us about these select groups of Americans was clear: I’ll make your life better, by constraining their freedom - - making “rich people” less free to create and possess wealth, making companies less free to produce a profit, limiting how much an individual can earn at their job, and so forth. These ideas make for absurd economic policy, in that no President, not even dear leader Barack, can simply re-distribute the nation into prosperity - at some point, somebody has to actually “produce wealth.”
But as political rhetoric, it resonates, which means that at least some Americans really like the idea of taking away other people’s freedom.
In my current hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, there is further evidence of this sickness. After the irrational run-up in Phoenix area real estate prices earlier this decade, followed by the devastating foreclosure crash over the past 18 months, homes in Phoenix are finally starting to sell again. But one of the challenges facing realtors and buyers is what to do with the “damaged” foreclosures.
It’s a bit of an epidemic. Americans, living in Arizona, who, upon losing their otherwise nice, suburban house, on their way out the door go about breaking all the windows, stealing hardware and appliances, and in some instances - - just to “get even,” I suppose - - urinating and defecating on carpets, and burning walls and cabinetry with matches and lighters. Once again, evidence of “the sickness” presents itself - -“I’ll feel better by restricting somebody else’s freedom” - in this case, the next owner’s freedom to enjoy the house.
The sickness also impacts the ways in which some Americans view the world. While hosting talk radio at Phoenix, Arizona’s Newstalk 92-3 KTAR, I spoke last Friday about Recording Artist Tyrese Gibson’s absurd performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Los Angeles Lakers’ NBA playoff game the night before. Where the lyric reads “the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there..,” Gibson sang “..that our Lakers were still there..” It was disrespectful, it was nonsensical, and I said as much on the show.
But talk show caller Darren, an Army veteran, declared that he fought for “everything that flag represents” - and then explained that Gibson should be “imprisoned for six months” for his stupidity.
“When you were in the Army, were you protecting and upholding the U.S. Constitution?” I asked.
“Of course I was” Darren explained.
“Did that include the First Amendment, or did you leave that one out?” I asked. After a few more seconds of discussion, I thanked Darren for his service in the Army, and assured him that constraining somebody else’s First Amendment rights - - even if that person is “an idiot” - - does NOT make his life any better.
Americans need to become “okay” with freedom again - - not only their own freedom, but that of their fellow Americans.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
American freedom is spiraling out of control, and it needs to be reigned-in.
Right?
I don’t know any American who would actually say such a thing - at least not in so many words. But far too many Americans have succumbed to a certain “sickness” these days. It’s the perverse notion that their lives will be improved, and that they will be made to “feel better,” when the freedom of other American individuals and groups is diminished.
This nonsense not only makes for some nasty politics, but is also shaping the ways in which many Americans view the world around them.
Ever since the release of my first book “White House Confidential - The Little Book Of Weird Presidential History,” I frequently get asked if our modern-day politics are the nastiest in American history. The answer is clearly “no.” In terms of nasty behavior among politicians and candidates, things have been far uglier in previous generations.
For example, most Americans would be shocked to learn that a former U.S. Vice President (Aaron Burr) once got in such a heated argument with the former U.S. Treasury Secretary (Alexander Hamilton), that the V.P. ended up shooting and murdering the Treasury Secretary. And it may be “news” to some that while campaigning for re-election in 1828, President John Quincy Adams was so ugly in his attacks on his opponent‘s wife, Rachel Jackson became emotionally debilitated during the campaign, and died from a heart attack days after Andrew Jackson won the election (she was, quite literally, buried in the dress that she intended to wear at her husband’s inauguration).
But those are examples of politicians and candidates beating-up on each other. Today, private American citizens want to do damage to other private American citizens, and politicians are all-too- happy to “play” us for all we’re worth.
Our current President ran an incredibly successful campaign, driven in no small part by his promises of punishing certain groups of Americans. “Rich people,” “overpaid corporate executives,” “the oil companies,” and “pharmaceutical manufacturers” were all targets of Barack Obama’s vicious attacks.
And his message to the rest of us about these select groups of Americans was clear: I’ll make your life better, by constraining their freedom - - making “rich people” less free to create and possess wealth, making companies less free to produce a profit, limiting how much an individual can earn at their job, and so forth. These ideas make for absurd economic policy, in that no President, not even dear leader Barack, can simply re-distribute the nation into prosperity - at some point, somebody has to actually “produce wealth.”
But as political rhetoric, it resonates, which means that at least some Americans really like the idea of taking away other people’s freedom.
In my current hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, there is further evidence of this sickness. After the irrational run-up in Phoenix area real estate prices earlier this decade, followed by the devastating foreclosure crash over the past 18 months, homes in Phoenix are finally starting to sell again. But one of the challenges facing realtors and buyers is what to do with the “damaged” foreclosures.
It’s a bit of an epidemic. Americans, living in Arizona, who, upon losing their otherwise nice, suburban house, on their way out the door go about breaking all the windows, stealing hardware and appliances, and in some instances - - just to “get even,” I suppose - - urinating and defecating on carpets, and burning walls and cabinetry with matches and lighters. Once again, evidence of “the sickness” presents itself - -“I’ll feel better by restricting somebody else’s freedom” - in this case, the next owner’s freedom to enjoy the house.
The sickness also impacts the ways in which some Americans view the world. While hosting talk radio at Phoenix, Arizona’s Newstalk 92-3 KTAR, I spoke last Friday about Recording Artist Tyrese Gibson’s absurd performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Los Angeles Lakers’ NBA playoff game the night before. Where the lyric reads “the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there..,” Gibson sang “..that our Lakers were still there..” It was disrespectful, it was nonsensical, and I said as much on the show.
But talk show caller Darren, an Army veteran, declared that he fought for “everything that flag represents” - and then explained that Gibson should be “imprisoned for six months” for his stupidity.
“When you were in the Army, were you protecting and upholding the U.S. Constitution?” I asked.
“Of course I was” Darren explained.
“Did that include the First Amendment, or did you leave that one out?” I asked. After a few more seconds of discussion, I thanked Darren for his service in the Army, and assured him that constraining somebody else’s First Amendment rights - - even if that person is “an idiot” - - does NOT make his life any better.
Americans need to become “okay” with freedom again - - not only their own freedom, but that of their fellow Americans.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Conservative Founders
Right from the beginning.
By Patrick Allitt
Thursday, May 28, 2009
C.A.A. NOTE: The following is adapted from The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History, published this week.
In the history of the early republic, the term “Federalist” had two meanings. Both are important in the history of American conservative thought. First, Federalists were the politicians and thinkers of the 1780s who wrote the Constitution and argued in favor of using it in place of the Articles of Confederation. Their experiences since 1777 had convinced them that the Articles were too weak to hold the new nation together and that a stronger instrument of government was necessary. Their antagonists, the anti-Federalists, argued that the Constitution would rob citizens of their new liberties and would subordinate the states to an overmighty central government, that it was, in effect, counter-revolutionary.
Federalist refers, second, to the politicians of the 1790s and 1800s who rallied around George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton in what some historians have described as the First Party System. Although they did not constitute a political party in the modern sense and had a principled objection to the creation of political factions, in practice they shared views and collaborated on a wide variety of issues. At home they wanted a strong federal government guiding national economic policy. In foreign policy they favored Britain in the wars of the French Revolution. They feared French revolutionary radicalism and accused their rivals, the Jeffersonian Republicans, of being Jacobins (a reference to the instigators of France’s Reign of Terror). Believers in social hierarchy, class deference, and restraint, they did not think the American republic should become a democracy. It is, accordingly, appropriate to think of them as conservatives, even though it is a word they rarely used to describe themselves.
The Constitution was written by 55 men, meeting in secret, whose experience in the early 1780s convinced them that the republic was in danger. They wanted to preserve the nation for which they had fought against Britain and which, after Shays’s Rebellion, seemed to be bankrupt, unmanageable, and about to break up. Their work was simultaneously revolutionary, in that it created a written blueprint by which the nation would live, and conservative, in that it drew from the wisdom of the ages and aimed to embody the political lessons taught by the experience of generations.
The document we now know as the Federalist papers was the new nation’s first conservative classic. Its 85 essays were written at high speed and published in newspapers sometimes at the rate of four per week, by supporters of the Constitution seeking to persuade their fellow citizens that this new frame of government was necessary and good, that it would make the central government effective yet preserve their liberty. The essays, 51 of them written by Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), 29 by James Madison (1751–1836), and five by John Jay (1745–1829), were all published under the pen name “Publius” (a reference to Publius Valerius, who had banished the last king of Rome and founded the Roman republic). Most newspapers featured anti-Constitution or anti-Federalist essays on the same or adjacent pages, so that readers could follow arguments for and against each new element of the proposed Constitution.
Hamilton and Madison differed on many issues, but in 1787 they agreed on the need for the Constitution and agreed to make Publius as consistent as possible. Both believed that the Constitution addressed hard realities better than the ineffective Articles of Confederation and was well attuned to human imperfection. As Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow says: “The two shared a grim vision of the human condition, even if Hamilton’s had the blacker tinge. They both wanted to erect barriers against irrational popular impulses and tyrannical minorities and majorities. To this end they thought that public opinion should be distilled by skeptical, sober-minded representatives.”
The Constitution, they wrote, justifies an increase in the power of the central or federal government, which is essential if the nation is to hold together at all and not become a cluster of lesser federations. Because men are swayed by self-interest, because they are passionate, ambitious, and greedy, the Constitution places limits on how much power they can exercise, and for how long. Ordinary citizens contribute by electing representatives, but their choices are complemented by indirect elections (state legislatures, not ordinary voters, chose U.S. senators), and all are subject to an impartial, unelected judiciary. Under the Constitution the nation would, they said, be strong enough to face down all internal and external threats.
A few of the essays have been acclaimed for their particular insight and for adapting old political ideas to new American conditions. The Federalist, No. 10, for example, argued that the vast geographic extent of the United States was a strength, not a weakness. It contradicted the conventional view that republics could prosper — and endure — only if they were small. Why might size be an advantage? The larger the republic, the more likely that it could assemble outstanding men as its legislators. “As each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried.” Further, the geographic and economic diversity of a large nation would inhibit the formation of any one overmighty faction. Different areas would have different material interests, which could compete without upsetting the whole system.
Publius was careful to reassure readers that the reach of the federal government was limited to issues of collective concern that could not be taken care of locally. Individual states would conduct their own affairs and need not fear obtrusive federal officials; the Constitution was not creating a single, all-powerful national government. In the Federalist, No. 45, he wrote that “the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the state.”
Members of the revolutionary generation saw themselves as having overthrown a tyrant, King George III, and some were afraid that the Constitution might create a new form of tyranny. Publius explained in the Federalist, No. 51, that this hazard would be prevented through the separation of powers. Each section of the proposed government had a particular function. The self-respect of the people in that section would lead them to preserve it, protect its dignity, and prevent encroachments from the other sections. In this way human nature, despite all its weaknesses, would preserve separation of powers and prevent tyranny. In a classic passage that any conservative can read with pleasure Publius wrote: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. . . . It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” In a nod to the principle of popular sovereignty the passage concludes: “A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
All 85 of the papers are written in a stylish 18th-century prose that requires a 21st-century reader’s full attention. They never deviate into pious hopes and make no claim for the transformation of humanity, but exhibit, rather, a clear-eyed view of human realities and political experience, showing how thoroughly Madison and Hamilton had studied the fate of earlier republics and the characteristics of their decline.
The unanimous choice of George Washington (1732–99), the most famous and widely honored man in America, as first president, added greatly to the Constitution’s legitimacy and its prospect of survival. At first, Federalist had meant simply a supporter of the Constitution, by contrast with the anti-Federalists who opposed it. Once the document was in operation, however, two tendencies developed in the political life of the 1790s. We remember these groups as Federalist and Republican, though they were not political parties in the modern sense, in that they lacked the management and machinery to enforce party discipline on their members.
The Federalists of the 1780s and 1790s did not describe themselves as conservatives, but they certainly hoped, with the help of the Constitution, to conserve a traditional social order that, as they saw it, was threatened by disorder from below and radicalism from abroad. Afraid that the chaos of the French Revolution, which reached its height in the Terror of 1793, might spread to America, they tried to preserve the old social hierarchy and to act as much like British gentlemen in the new republic, as the colonial elite had done a few decades earlier. Even their view of the American Revolution was conservative. Far from seeing it as a bold adventure in liberty, sweeping away the old British order of things to create a new and rational alternative, they saw it as an attempt to restore the traditionally balanced British constitution, which a grasping monarchy had corrupted in the course of the 18th century. They were, in their own eyes, “restorationists” rather than revolutionaries. One among them, Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848) of Massachusetts, expressed this point exactly when he wrote: “Those [people] mistake altogether the nature of the political controversy between the American Colonies and the British Ministry, who suggest that our fathers were actuated by a radical spirit. They acted on the defensive, and contended only for constitutional rights and privileges.”
Their ideas about a balanced political system came from the old Whig tradition, which had grown out of English political controversies of the 17th and early 18th centuries. A generation of intellectual historians in the past three decades has shown the influence and power of these ideas for nearly all the American revolutionary leaders. “Country” Whigs, opponents of the king’s court circle, idealized the classical republican tradition, derived from such Roman authors as Cicero and Tacitus, descending through Machiavelli and the Florentine humanists of the Renaissance, and taking more recent form in the work of the British writers James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, and Thomas Gordon. The ideal political system, according to this view, draws its legitimacy ultimately from the people but in practice balances monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, preventing any of the three from dominating the others and creating a condition of ordered liberty. The citizens must be civic-minded but not ambitious, dedicated to the nation without looking on politics as an arena for self-advancement.
The Revolution had, of course, brought monarchy to an end in the United States, and the new nation was determined to have no titled aristocracy. The historian Gordon Wood has shown that a new variant of classical republicanism developed under these circumstances, adapting the presidency to the role formerly held by the monarch, and the Senate to the role formerly held by the aristocracy. But president, Senate, and House were all, in the terms of the tradition, parts of the democratic element. Whether these substitutions would work remained uncertain. Fisher Ames (1758–1808), perhaps the most outspoken of the Federalists, doubted it. “The power of the people, if uncontroverted, is licentious and mobbish,” he wrote. “It is a government by force without discipline. It is led by demagogues who are soon supplanted by bolder and abler rivals, and soon the whole power is in the hands of . . . the boldest and most violent.” A virtuous aristocracy, “natural” if not hereditary, must restrain the common people.
No one worried more about the lack of monarchs and aristocrats than John Adams (1735–1826), one of the seminal figures in the history of American conservatism. He thought President Washington should be exalted by being referred to as “His Majesty,” rather than the humble “Mr. President,” and argued that presidential vetoes should not be reversible even by a two-thirds majority in Congress. Adams feared the influence of the philosophes, a group of 18th-century French intellectuals who attempted to understand politics from first principles rather than on the basis of long historical experience. In his view these writers, including Denis Diderot (1713–84), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–94), were unrealistic about the dark human passions and too willing to think the best of humanity, despite historical experience to the contrary. “Not one of them takes human nature as its foundation.” Adams argued for a political system consonant with human realities, restraining men’s passions and limiting their power. “The best republics will be virtuous and have been so, but we may hazard a conjecture that the virtues have been the effect of the well ordered constitution, rather than the cause.” Adams, like Ames, was skeptical of the idea of human equality.
In 1811 he remarked, “Equality is one of those equivocal words which the philosophy of the 18th century has made fraudulent. . . . In the last 25 years it has cheated millions out of their lives and tens of millions out of their property.”
Adams’s three-volume http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306717611/ref=nosim/nationalreviewonDefence of Constitutions (1787) was as longwinded as the Federalist essays were concise. It argued against the idea — favored by Tom Paine and other revolutionary-era radicals — of a one-house (unicameral) legislature on the grounds that it was too democratic, too vulnerable to the transient passions of uneducated voters. Adams felt particularly proud of having written this attack on democracy before the French Revolution, with “its face of Blood and Horror, of Murder and Massacre, of Ambition and Avarice,” and even suggested that it had inspired Edmund Burke’s classic indictment, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). The Discourses on Davila (1790), Adams’s translation of a 17th-century French book on civil war, interlarded with his own commentaries, was chiefly an analysis of human motivation in politics. Adams believed that no motive is more central in life than the desire to be noticed, admired, and emulated. Men’s different ways of going about it and their different qualities make inequality inevitable. This insatiable craving could, of course, become dangerous; government must guide and sometimes inhibit it.
The Federalists were landed gentlemen of wealth and high social standing who shared Adams’s view that social hierarchy was natural. Skeptical of popular democracy, they believed that only the elite, only those privileged by property, education, and leisure, were in a position to participate in politics. It seemed clear to them that a poor man entering politics would use his position to enrich himself, whereas a rich man, needing no more wealth, would dedicate himself to the public good. Republican citizens, and especially leaders, must be virtuous, immune to the temptations of corruption and of perverting the government to serve private ends. Adams disliked elections, saying that “experiments of this kind have been so often tried, and so universally found productive of horrors, that there is great reason to dread them.” He and his generation knew from personal experience that Election Day could often become unruly or violent, as voting took place in public and as rival candidates treated voters to whiskey and showered abuse on one another.
The voters’ job, as Federalist politicians and writers understood it, was to choose representatives from among the community’s superior men, who would then govern on behalf of the community as a whole with virtuous selflessness, trusting to their consciences to act uprightly. William Richardson Davie (1756–1820), a North Carolina Federalist, told electors in 1803: “I never have and I never will surrender my principles to the opinions of any man, or description of men, either in or out of power; and . . . I wish no man to vote for me, who is not willing to leave me free to pursue the good of my country according to the best of my judgment, without respect either to party men or party views.” He and his fellow Federalists would not represent their constituents’ particular interests because to do so would encourage factionalism at the expense of the general good.
Like later conservative generations, however, the Federalists learned that they had to adapt to new conditions if they were to have any effective political role. America was becoming more democratic, however they might deplore the trend, and to survive in politics they had to woo the voters. The historian David Fischer has demonstrated a generational divide between old Federalists, who could never make the switch to popular campaigning, and young Federalists, who realized after 1800 that they must create local, statewide, and national party organizations or else face political extinction.
The Federalists chronically underestimated the ability of men in the social classes beneath them. From the 1780s right into the 1820s they complained incessantly about the anarchic tendencies of the lower orders and warned that democracy leads to disaster. America was democratizing rapidly throughout the era but showed no signs of revolutionary chaos, even if lower class men’s respect for their “betters” was weakening. Gloomy and unadventurous, the Federalists saw the Louisiana Purchase and the rapid westward spread of the republic not as opportunities but as auguries of doom. And despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, they confused Jefferson and his party with wicked, French-style revolutionaries. From this distance the political continuities between the 1790s and 1800s are more striking than the discontinuities.
There is a more creditable side to the Federalists, which it also bequeathed to American conservatism. Their legacy includes much that later generations of conservatives could applaud: the rule of law under the Constitution, the preservation of a republic based on the principle of mixed government, peaceful changes of government through election, and judicial supremacy. They also tried to assure a stable financial basis for the federal government, national credibility in diplomacy, and protection to the wealth of the privileged elite. Hamilton and Adams, the two most brilliant Federalists, and most of their supporters, were unashamed of their elitism, regarding the existence of a virtuous natural aristocracy as vital to the republic’s health; they took seriously the idea that inequality is both natural and desirable.
By Patrick Allitt
Thursday, May 28, 2009
C.A.A. NOTE: The following is adapted from The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History, published this week.
In the history of the early republic, the term “Federalist” had two meanings. Both are important in the history of American conservative thought. First, Federalists were the politicians and thinkers of the 1780s who wrote the Constitution and argued in favor of using it in place of the Articles of Confederation. Their experiences since 1777 had convinced them that the Articles were too weak to hold the new nation together and that a stronger instrument of government was necessary. Their antagonists, the anti-Federalists, argued that the Constitution would rob citizens of their new liberties and would subordinate the states to an overmighty central government, that it was, in effect, counter-revolutionary.
Federalist refers, second, to the politicians of the 1790s and 1800s who rallied around George Washington, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton in what some historians have described as the First Party System. Although they did not constitute a political party in the modern sense and had a principled objection to the creation of political factions, in practice they shared views and collaborated on a wide variety of issues. At home they wanted a strong federal government guiding national economic policy. In foreign policy they favored Britain in the wars of the French Revolution. They feared French revolutionary radicalism and accused their rivals, the Jeffersonian Republicans, of being Jacobins (a reference to the instigators of France’s Reign of Terror). Believers in social hierarchy, class deference, and restraint, they did not think the American republic should become a democracy. It is, accordingly, appropriate to think of them as conservatives, even though it is a word they rarely used to describe themselves.
The Constitution was written by 55 men, meeting in secret, whose experience in the early 1780s convinced them that the republic was in danger. They wanted to preserve the nation for which they had fought against Britain and which, after Shays’s Rebellion, seemed to be bankrupt, unmanageable, and about to break up. Their work was simultaneously revolutionary, in that it created a written blueprint by which the nation would live, and conservative, in that it drew from the wisdom of the ages and aimed to embody the political lessons taught by the experience of generations.
The document we now know as the Federalist papers was the new nation’s first conservative classic. Its 85 essays were written at high speed and published in newspapers sometimes at the rate of four per week, by supporters of the Constitution seeking to persuade their fellow citizens that this new frame of government was necessary and good, that it would make the central government effective yet preserve their liberty. The essays, 51 of them written by Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), 29 by James Madison (1751–1836), and five by John Jay (1745–1829), were all published under the pen name “Publius” (a reference to Publius Valerius, who had banished the last king of Rome and founded the Roman republic). Most newspapers featured anti-Constitution or anti-Federalist essays on the same or adjacent pages, so that readers could follow arguments for and against each new element of the proposed Constitution.
Hamilton and Madison differed on many issues, but in 1787 they agreed on the need for the Constitution and agreed to make Publius as consistent as possible. Both believed that the Constitution addressed hard realities better than the ineffective Articles of Confederation and was well attuned to human imperfection. As Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow says: “The two shared a grim vision of the human condition, even if Hamilton’s had the blacker tinge. They both wanted to erect barriers against irrational popular impulses and tyrannical minorities and majorities. To this end they thought that public opinion should be distilled by skeptical, sober-minded representatives.”
The Constitution, they wrote, justifies an increase in the power of the central or federal government, which is essential if the nation is to hold together at all and not become a cluster of lesser federations. Because men are swayed by self-interest, because they are passionate, ambitious, and greedy, the Constitution places limits on how much power they can exercise, and for how long. Ordinary citizens contribute by electing representatives, but their choices are complemented by indirect elections (state legislatures, not ordinary voters, chose U.S. senators), and all are subject to an impartial, unelected judiciary. Under the Constitution the nation would, they said, be strong enough to face down all internal and external threats.
A few of the essays have been acclaimed for their particular insight and for adapting old political ideas to new American conditions. The Federalist, No. 10, for example, argued that the vast geographic extent of the United States was a strength, not a weakness. It contradicted the conventional view that republics could prosper — and endure — only if they were small. Why might size be an advantage? The larger the republic, the more likely that it could assemble outstanding men as its legislators. “As each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried.” Further, the geographic and economic diversity of a large nation would inhibit the formation of any one overmighty faction. Different areas would have different material interests, which could compete without upsetting the whole system.
Publius was careful to reassure readers that the reach of the federal government was limited to issues of collective concern that could not be taken care of locally. Individual states would conduct their own affairs and need not fear obtrusive federal officials; the Constitution was not creating a single, all-powerful national government. In the Federalist, No. 45, he wrote that “the powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the state.”
Members of the revolutionary generation saw themselves as having overthrown a tyrant, King George III, and some were afraid that the Constitution might create a new form of tyranny. Publius explained in the Federalist, No. 51, that this hazard would be prevented through the separation of powers. Each section of the proposed government had a particular function. The self-respect of the people in that section would lead them to preserve it, protect its dignity, and prevent encroachments from the other sections. In this way human nature, despite all its weaknesses, would preserve separation of powers and prevent tyranny. In a classic passage that any conservative can read with pleasure Publius wrote: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. . . . It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” In a nod to the principle of popular sovereignty the passage concludes: “A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
All 85 of the papers are written in a stylish 18th-century prose that requires a 21st-century reader’s full attention. They never deviate into pious hopes and make no claim for the transformation of humanity, but exhibit, rather, a clear-eyed view of human realities and political experience, showing how thoroughly Madison and Hamilton had studied the fate of earlier republics and the characteristics of their decline.
The unanimous choice of George Washington (1732–99), the most famous and widely honored man in America, as first president, added greatly to the Constitution’s legitimacy and its prospect of survival. At first, Federalist had meant simply a supporter of the Constitution, by contrast with the anti-Federalists who opposed it. Once the document was in operation, however, two tendencies developed in the political life of the 1790s. We remember these groups as Federalist and Republican, though they were not political parties in the modern sense, in that they lacked the management and machinery to enforce party discipline on their members.
The Federalists of the 1780s and 1790s did not describe themselves as conservatives, but they certainly hoped, with the help of the Constitution, to conserve a traditional social order that, as they saw it, was threatened by disorder from below and radicalism from abroad. Afraid that the chaos of the French Revolution, which reached its height in the Terror of 1793, might spread to America, they tried to preserve the old social hierarchy and to act as much like British gentlemen in the new republic, as the colonial elite had done a few decades earlier. Even their view of the American Revolution was conservative. Far from seeing it as a bold adventure in liberty, sweeping away the old British order of things to create a new and rational alternative, they saw it as an attempt to restore the traditionally balanced British constitution, which a grasping monarchy had corrupted in the course of the 18th century. They were, in their own eyes, “restorationists” rather than revolutionaries. One among them, Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848) of Massachusetts, expressed this point exactly when he wrote: “Those [people] mistake altogether the nature of the political controversy between the American Colonies and the British Ministry, who suggest that our fathers were actuated by a radical spirit. They acted on the defensive, and contended only for constitutional rights and privileges.”
Their ideas about a balanced political system came from the old Whig tradition, which had grown out of English political controversies of the 17th and early 18th centuries. A generation of intellectual historians in the past three decades has shown the influence and power of these ideas for nearly all the American revolutionary leaders. “Country” Whigs, opponents of the king’s court circle, idealized the classical republican tradition, derived from such Roman authors as Cicero and Tacitus, descending through Machiavelli and the Florentine humanists of the Renaissance, and taking more recent form in the work of the British writers James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Trenchard, and Thomas Gordon. The ideal political system, according to this view, draws its legitimacy ultimately from the people but in practice balances monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, preventing any of the three from dominating the others and creating a condition of ordered liberty. The citizens must be civic-minded but not ambitious, dedicated to the nation without looking on politics as an arena for self-advancement.
The Revolution had, of course, brought monarchy to an end in the United States, and the new nation was determined to have no titled aristocracy. The historian Gordon Wood has shown that a new variant of classical republicanism developed under these circumstances, adapting the presidency to the role formerly held by the monarch, and the Senate to the role formerly held by the aristocracy. But president, Senate, and House were all, in the terms of the tradition, parts of the democratic element. Whether these substitutions would work remained uncertain. Fisher Ames (1758–1808), perhaps the most outspoken of the Federalists, doubted it. “The power of the people, if uncontroverted, is licentious and mobbish,” he wrote. “It is a government by force without discipline. It is led by demagogues who are soon supplanted by bolder and abler rivals, and soon the whole power is in the hands of . . . the boldest and most violent.” A virtuous aristocracy, “natural” if not hereditary, must restrain the common people.
No one worried more about the lack of monarchs and aristocrats than John Adams (1735–1826), one of the seminal figures in the history of American conservatism. He thought President Washington should be exalted by being referred to as “His Majesty,” rather than the humble “Mr. President,” and argued that presidential vetoes should not be reversible even by a two-thirds majority in Congress. Adams feared the influence of the philosophes, a group of 18th-century French intellectuals who attempted to understand politics from first principles rather than on the basis of long historical experience. In his view these writers, including Denis Diderot (1713–84), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–94), were unrealistic about the dark human passions and too willing to think the best of humanity, despite historical experience to the contrary. “Not one of them takes human nature as its foundation.” Adams argued for a political system consonant with human realities, restraining men’s passions and limiting their power. “The best republics will be virtuous and have been so, but we may hazard a conjecture that the virtues have been the effect of the well ordered constitution, rather than the cause.” Adams, like Ames, was skeptical of the idea of human equality.
In 1811 he remarked, “Equality is one of those equivocal words which the philosophy of the 18th century has made fraudulent. . . . In the last 25 years it has cheated millions out of their lives and tens of millions out of their property.”
Adams’s three-volume http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306717611/ref=nosim/nationalreviewonDefence of Constitutions (1787) was as longwinded as the Federalist essays were concise. It argued against the idea — favored by Tom Paine and other revolutionary-era radicals — of a one-house (unicameral) legislature on the grounds that it was too democratic, too vulnerable to the transient passions of uneducated voters. Adams felt particularly proud of having written this attack on democracy before the French Revolution, with “its face of Blood and Horror, of Murder and Massacre, of Ambition and Avarice,” and even suggested that it had inspired Edmund Burke’s classic indictment, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). The Discourses on Davila (1790), Adams’s translation of a 17th-century French book on civil war, interlarded with his own commentaries, was chiefly an analysis of human motivation in politics. Adams believed that no motive is more central in life than the desire to be noticed, admired, and emulated. Men’s different ways of going about it and their different qualities make inequality inevitable. This insatiable craving could, of course, become dangerous; government must guide and sometimes inhibit it.
The Federalists were landed gentlemen of wealth and high social standing who shared Adams’s view that social hierarchy was natural. Skeptical of popular democracy, they believed that only the elite, only those privileged by property, education, and leisure, were in a position to participate in politics. It seemed clear to them that a poor man entering politics would use his position to enrich himself, whereas a rich man, needing no more wealth, would dedicate himself to the public good. Republican citizens, and especially leaders, must be virtuous, immune to the temptations of corruption and of perverting the government to serve private ends. Adams disliked elections, saying that “experiments of this kind have been so often tried, and so universally found productive of horrors, that there is great reason to dread them.” He and his generation knew from personal experience that Election Day could often become unruly or violent, as voting took place in public and as rival candidates treated voters to whiskey and showered abuse on one another.
The voters’ job, as Federalist politicians and writers understood it, was to choose representatives from among the community’s superior men, who would then govern on behalf of the community as a whole with virtuous selflessness, trusting to their consciences to act uprightly. William Richardson Davie (1756–1820), a North Carolina Federalist, told electors in 1803: “I never have and I never will surrender my principles to the opinions of any man, or description of men, either in or out of power; and . . . I wish no man to vote for me, who is not willing to leave me free to pursue the good of my country according to the best of my judgment, without respect either to party men or party views.” He and his fellow Federalists would not represent their constituents’ particular interests because to do so would encourage factionalism at the expense of the general good.
Like later conservative generations, however, the Federalists learned that they had to adapt to new conditions if they were to have any effective political role. America was becoming more democratic, however they might deplore the trend, and to survive in politics they had to woo the voters. The historian David Fischer has demonstrated a generational divide between old Federalists, who could never make the switch to popular campaigning, and young Federalists, who realized after 1800 that they must create local, statewide, and national party organizations or else face political extinction.
The Federalists chronically underestimated the ability of men in the social classes beneath them. From the 1780s right into the 1820s they complained incessantly about the anarchic tendencies of the lower orders and warned that democracy leads to disaster. America was democratizing rapidly throughout the era but showed no signs of revolutionary chaos, even if lower class men’s respect for their “betters” was weakening. Gloomy and unadventurous, the Federalists saw the Louisiana Purchase and the rapid westward spread of the republic not as opportunities but as auguries of doom. And despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, they confused Jefferson and his party with wicked, French-style revolutionaries. From this distance the political continuities between the 1790s and 1800s are more striking than the discontinuities.
There is a more creditable side to the Federalists, which it also bequeathed to American conservatism. Their legacy includes much that later generations of conservatives could applaud: the rule of law under the Constitution, the preservation of a republic based on the principle of mixed government, peaceful changes of government through election, and judicial supremacy. They also tried to assure a stable financial basis for the federal government, national credibility in diplomacy, and protection to the wealth of the privileged elite. Hamilton and Adams, the two most brilliant Federalists, and most of their supporters, were unashamed of their elitism, regarding the existence of a virtuous natural aristocracy as vital to the republic’s health; they took seriously the idea that inequality is both natural and desirable.
The War Against Modernity
And why Islamists are not tempted by “peace.”
By Clifford D. May
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The war being waged against the West also is a war against modernity. For nearly a thousand years, Islam reigned supreme in much of the world. But with the coming of the modern era — generally seen as beginning in the 18th century — Christendom outpaced the Muslim world by almost every measure. Islamists believe the destruction of modernity is necessary if Islam is to regain the power to which it is entitled.
“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war,” the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni wrote back in 1942. “Those [who say this] are witless. Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.”
More than three decades later, Khomeini would put theory into practice, leading a revolution not just against the Shah of Iran, but also against America and other modern liberal democracies.
Modernity went hand-in-and with the Industrial Revolution — the development of a vast array of mechanical, technological, and scientific inventions. Islamic societies did not demonstrate great aptitude in this area. That was among the reasons they were left behind economically, with the notable exception of those regimes that had oil underfoot. It was the Industrial Revolution that made oil valuable. Westerners found it, pumped it, refined it, and have used it to fuel Western-produced machines ever since.
An important component of the Industrial Revolution was mechanized weaponry: guns, cannons, tanks, and missiles. Initially, this also advantaged the West. Early in his career, Winston Churchill battled a variety of radical Islam in the Sudan. In 1899, he wrote that this “militant and proselytizing faith” should be seen as a grave threat, and “were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science . . . the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
Recent acts of terrorism — a passenger plane manufactured in America becomes an Islamist missile, a cell phone made in Europe detonates an explosive device in Afghanistan — have turned the technological tables; to what extent, it’s too soon to predict.
Throughout most of history, war was seen as glorious — at least by kings, generals, and others who wielded power. No one expressed this view more eloquently than Genghis Khan, who conquered many Islamic lands in the 13th century, and who rhapsodized: “Man’s highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies; to pursue them; to deprive them of their possessions; to make their beloved weep; to ride on their horses; and to embrace their wives and daughters.”
To modern people, such sentiments sound absurd. The terrible conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries caused most Westerners to treasure peace, and to regard war as hellish, a last resort.
But it is mirror-imaging to assume that all cultures have come to see war the same way. Khomeini explained what he interpreted to be the proper Muslim perspective: “Islam says: Kill [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. . . . People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors! . . . There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight.”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are committed Khomeinists. If you understand this, you understand that it is senseless to attempt to engage them by holding out the prospect of “peace.” As the scholar Fouad Ajami recently wrote, for militant Islamists truces and negotiated agreements are “at best a breathing spell before the fight for their utopia is taken up again.”
It is unserious to say — as former National Security Council staff members Flynt and Hillary Leverett did in a recent New York Times op-ed — that America’s problems with Iran derive from Tehran’s “legitimate concerns about American intentions,” and that what appears to us as hostility is actually a “fundamentally defensive reaction” on the part of the regime.
Only self-delusion can explain their insistence that President Obama be “willing to work with Tehran to integrate [Hamas and Hezbollah] into lasting settlements of the Middle East’s core political conflicts.” Settlements based on compromises, rather than conquest and victory, are not what militant jihadists want. And these “core political conflicts” are not that — they are symptoms, not the disease.
There is no reason — other than wishful thinking — to believe that Iran’s rulers and other Islamists seek cordial relations with what they view as the decadent and Satanic West. Nevertheless, one American administration after another has acted as though the truth were otherwise. On his final European tour as president a year ago, George W. Bush said Tehran’s rulers must end their drive for nuclear weapons if they want closer ties with the U.S. and Europe. “They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us,” he said. One can imagine Iran’s rulers shaking their heads in bewildered amusement. What they seek is not our friendship. It is our submission. We confuse the two at our peril.
Similarly, this week, the White House responded to the test of a nuclear device by North Korea — a regime that has supplied missile and other technology to both Iran and its client, Syria — by saying “such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation.”
Were North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il a modern man, he would weep salty tears over that prospect. But like Iran’s rulers, he’s not, so he won’t. He will go on his merry way until and unless someone stops him.
By Clifford D. May
Thursday, May 28, 2009
The war being waged against the West also is a war against modernity. For nearly a thousand years, Islam reigned supreme in much of the world. But with the coming of the modern era — generally seen as beginning in the 18th century — Christendom outpaced the Muslim world by almost every measure. Islamists believe the destruction of modernity is necessary if Islam is to regain the power to which it is entitled.
“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war,” the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni wrote back in 1942. “Those [who say this] are witless. Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world.”
More than three decades later, Khomeini would put theory into practice, leading a revolution not just against the Shah of Iran, but also against America and other modern liberal democracies.
Modernity went hand-in-and with the Industrial Revolution — the development of a vast array of mechanical, technological, and scientific inventions. Islamic societies did not demonstrate great aptitude in this area. That was among the reasons they were left behind economically, with the notable exception of those regimes that had oil underfoot. It was the Industrial Revolution that made oil valuable. Westerners found it, pumped it, refined it, and have used it to fuel Western-produced machines ever since.
An important component of the Industrial Revolution was mechanized weaponry: guns, cannons, tanks, and missiles. Initially, this also advantaged the West. Early in his career, Winston Churchill battled a variety of radical Islam in the Sudan. In 1899, he wrote that this “militant and proselytizing faith” should be seen as a grave threat, and “were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science . . . the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
Recent acts of terrorism — a passenger plane manufactured in America becomes an Islamist missile, a cell phone made in Europe detonates an explosive device in Afghanistan — have turned the technological tables; to what extent, it’s too soon to predict.
Throughout most of history, war was seen as glorious — at least by kings, generals, and others who wielded power. No one expressed this view more eloquently than Genghis Khan, who conquered many Islamic lands in the 13th century, and who rhapsodized: “Man’s highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies; to pursue them; to deprive them of their possessions; to make their beloved weep; to ride on their horses; and to embrace their wives and daughters.”
To modern people, such sentiments sound absurd. The terrible conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries caused most Westerners to treasure peace, and to regard war as hellish, a last resort.
But it is mirror-imaging to assume that all cultures have come to see war the same way. Khomeini explained what he interpreted to be the proper Muslim perspective: “Islam says: Kill [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. . . . People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors! . . . There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight.”
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are committed Khomeinists. If you understand this, you understand that it is senseless to attempt to engage them by holding out the prospect of “peace.” As the scholar Fouad Ajami recently wrote, for militant Islamists truces and negotiated agreements are “at best a breathing spell before the fight for their utopia is taken up again.”
It is unserious to say — as former National Security Council staff members Flynt and Hillary Leverett did in a recent New York Times op-ed — that America’s problems with Iran derive from Tehran’s “legitimate concerns about American intentions,” and that what appears to us as hostility is actually a “fundamentally defensive reaction” on the part of the regime.
Only self-delusion can explain their insistence that President Obama be “willing to work with Tehran to integrate [Hamas and Hezbollah] into lasting settlements of the Middle East’s core political conflicts.” Settlements based on compromises, rather than conquest and victory, are not what militant jihadists want. And these “core political conflicts” are not that — they are symptoms, not the disease.
There is no reason — other than wishful thinking — to believe that Iran’s rulers and other Islamists seek cordial relations with what they view as the decadent and Satanic West. Nevertheless, one American administration after another has acted as though the truth were otherwise. On his final European tour as president a year ago, George W. Bush said Tehran’s rulers must end their drive for nuclear weapons if they want closer ties with the U.S. and Europe. “They can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us,” he said. One can imagine Iran’s rulers shaking their heads in bewildered amusement. What they seek is not our friendship. It is our submission. We confuse the two at our peril.
Similarly, this week, the White House responded to the test of a nuclear device by North Korea — a regime that has supplied missile and other technology to both Iran and its client, Syria — by saying “such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation.”
Were North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il a modern man, he would weep salty tears over that prospect. But like Iran’s rulers, he’s not, so he won’t. He will go on his merry way until and unless someone stops him.
Israel’s Cuban Missile Crisis -- All the Time
What will happen if Iran gets the bomb.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?
A lot of reasons have been offered by various experts.
Upon developing a nuclear weapon, states win instant prestige and attention beyond what they otherwise might have earned. Take away its bomb and North Korea would be in the news about as much as Chad.
Nuclear weapons also can change the nature of conventional warfare.
Israel’s Arab neighbors have not waged a full-scale traditional war against Israel since 1973 — in part because there is no longer a nuclear patron, in the form of the Soviet Union, to threaten the use of nukes should Israel strike back too strongly against its aggressors.
But give Iran a bomb or two and it will be able to guarantee Hezbollah and Hamas — or a coalition of Muslim states — a secure fallback position if they attack Israel and lose.
Then there is inter-Islamic rivalry. If Iran gets a bomb, it will send a message that the Persian Shiites, not the Sunni Arabs, are the true effective defenders of the faith against the Zionist entity.
Tehran will also remind these monarchies and dictatorships that Iran is an ascending revolutionary power that appeals to the Muslim masses across geographical boundaries.
Some even insist that Iran is apocalyptic — and that it seeks the bomb largely to stage a glorious mass suicide, in a nuclear exchange with Israel, in which millions go to their deaths, convinced they have at least earned a place in paradise by killing half the world’s Jews for Islam.
All these are the conventional explanations of why an energy-rich Iran is operating thousands of centrifuges.
The real reason may be something else.
More likely, Iran wishes to break Israel’s will — not necessarily by a nuclear strike. Instead, periodic threats from a nuclear theocracy, Iran may recognize, would do well enough.
Once armed with the bomb, Iran will likely increase the frequency of its now-familiar denial of the Holocaust. In between such well-publicized lunacy, some Iranians, such as Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will periodically threaten to wipe Israel off the map — or promise Armageddon if Israel retaliates against Hamas or Hezbollah.
The net effect would be for half the world’s Jews to hear constantly two messages — there was no Holocaust, but there might well be one soon. It would be analogous to the American public reliving the threats of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 — every day.
A recent poll revealed that a quarter of Israel’s population quite understandably might emigrate if Iran gets the bomb. And it seems likely that within a decade or two, a nuclear Iran could so demoralize the Israelis by such psychological intimidation that it could unravel Israel demographically without dropping a bomb.
Countries around the world would continue to sit idly by as they profit from lucrative trade with oil-rich Iran — now and then warning the Israelis not to be the preemptive aggressor and “start” a war.
Already, the Obama administration — through pro-Palestinian Mideast-affairs nominations such as those of Charles Freeman and Samantha Power, along with its pledge to help rebuild Gaza, its outreach to Syria and Iran, and its irritation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu — seems to be telling Israel that it is increasingly on its own.
Given demographic realities in the Middle East, if a large minority of Israelis emigrates, then the end of the Jewish state becomes possible without Iran ever dropping the bomb that it now so eagerly wishes to acquire.
By Victor Davis Hanson
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?
A lot of reasons have been offered by various experts.
Upon developing a nuclear weapon, states win instant prestige and attention beyond what they otherwise might have earned. Take away its bomb and North Korea would be in the news about as much as Chad.
Nuclear weapons also can change the nature of conventional warfare.
Israel’s Arab neighbors have not waged a full-scale traditional war against Israel since 1973 — in part because there is no longer a nuclear patron, in the form of the Soviet Union, to threaten the use of nukes should Israel strike back too strongly against its aggressors.
But give Iran a bomb or two and it will be able to guarantee Hezbollah and Hamas — or a coalition of Muslim states — a secure fallback position if they attack Israel and lose.
Then there is inter-Islamic rivalry. If Iran gets a bomb, it will send a message that the Persian Shiites, not the Sunni Arabs, are the true effective defenders of the faith against the Zionist entity.
Tehran will also remind these monarchies and dictatorships that Iran is an ascending revolutionary power that appeals to the Muslim masses across geographical boundaries.
Some even insist that Iran is apocalyptic — and that it seeks the bomb largely to stage a glorious mass suicide, in a nuclear exchange with Israel, in which millions go to their deaths, convinced they have at least earned a place in paradise by killing half the world’s Jews for Islam.
All these are the conventional explanations of why an energy-rich Iran is operating thousands of centrifuges.
The real reason may be something else.
More likely, Iran wishes to break Israel’s will — not necessarily by a nuclear strike. Instead, periodic threats from a nuclear theocracy, Iran may recognize, would do well enough.
Once armed with the bomb, Iran will likely increase the frequency of its now-familiar denial of the Holocaust. In between such well-publicized lunacy, some Iranians, such as Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will periodically threaten to wipe Israel off the map — or promise Armageddon if Israel retaliates against Hamas or Hezbollah.
The net effect would be for half the world’s Jews to hear constantly two messages — there was no Holocaust, but there might well be one soon. It would be analogous to the American public reliving the threats of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 — every day.
A recent poll revealed that a quarter of Israel’s population quite understandably might emigrate if Iran gets the bomb. And it seems likely that within a decade or two, a nuclear Iran could so demoralize the Israelis by such psychological intimidation that it could unravel Israel demographically without dropping a bomb.
Countries around the world would continue to sit idly by as they profit from lucrative trade with oil-rich Iran — now and then warning the Israelis not to be the preemptive aggressor and “start” a war.
Already, the Obama administration — through pro-Palestinian Mideast-affairs nominations such as those of Charles Freeman and Samantha Power, along with its pledge to help rebuild Gaza, its outreach to Syria and Iran, and its irritation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu — seems to be telling Israel that it is increasingly on its own.
Given demographic realities in the Middle East, if a large minority of Israelis emigrates, then the end of the Jewish state becomes possible without Iran ever dropping the bomb that it now so eagerly wishes to acquire.
Identity Politics, Left and Right
Steve Chapman
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Some people are unhappy to hear President Obama suggest that attributes like gender, ethnicity and "empathy" are critical in choosing a Supreme Court justice, and it's hard to blame them. When I hire a lawyer, I don't care about that person's ancestry, complexion, theological preoccupations, reproductive equipment or personal warmth -- I care about getting the best advice and representation.
Likewise for Supreme Court justices. Find me a tedious brainiac who reads the Constitution exactly as I read it, and I don't care if that person would fit in at the Chapman family reunion. Reducing a selection for a vitally important office to a demographic formula is not the path to sound constitutional interpretation.
Conservatives rightly lamented Sonia Sotomayor's suggestion that female Hispanic judges make better decisions than white males. At National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez ridiculed the odd notion, raised by one commentator, that her diabetes would deepen her judicial wisdom.
This is not to deny the value of a diversity of backgrounds and experiences in an institution like the Supreme Court. We all understand the world through our personal environment, and the more exposure we have to other people's experiences and perspectives, the better off we are.
A daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a housing project may have insights into police abuses or the drug war or regulation of taxicabs that a white man who grew up middle-class in Indiana would not. The white guy, however, might also know some things she wouldn't.
But that is a long way from asserting, as Sotomayor has, that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." A wise Latina, like a wise WASP male, understands she has no monopoly on rich experiences or vital truths. She values what her life has offered without letting herself be constrained by it. If she's a judge, she recognizes her obligation to strive for impartiality.
So conservatives have reason to be wary of Sotomayor's approach to judging. But it's a little late for most of them to decry identity politics. Few objections were heard from Republicans in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush decided that the ideal person to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall, the court's first black justice, was Clarence Thomas, who just happened to be black as well.
Bush did his best to have it both ways. He insisted that race was irrelevant and that Thomas was simply the "best qualified" candidate in the country. But he also said, "(I)f credit accrues to him for coming up through a tough life as a minority in this country, so much the better."
Back then, conservatives played the identity game gingerly, as if they were slightly embarrassed. But they have since learned to make the most of it. The most recent and regrettable example is Sarah Palin, lustily cheered by Republican audiences last year not because she had the credentials and ability to step into the presidency, but because she was the Right Kind of Person.
First, she was a woman, picked to attract disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, as Palin shamelessly highlighted: "Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."
Second, she was not one of those effete urban elitists but a real American -- small-town girl, beauty queen, hockey mom, "Bible-believing Christian" (as she put it), mother of five and moose hunter.
Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., said she was controversial because "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Palin herself celebrated her brethren from small towns, which she called "all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."
Of course it's useful to include the perspective of small-town residents in formulating policy, just as it's a good idea to consider the impact of laws on Latinos. But to imagine that either group -- or any group -- has a unique claim to wisdom or goodness is only to prove that no group is immune to foolishness.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Some people are unhappy to hear President Obama suggest that attributes like gender, ethnicity and "empathy" are critical in choosing a Supreme Court justice, and it's hard to blame them. When I hire a lawyer, I don't care about that person's ancestry, complexion, theological preoccupations, reproductive equipment or personal warmth -- I care about getting the best advice and representation.
Likewise for Supreme Court justices. Find me a tedious brainiac who reads the Constitution exactly as I read it, and I don't care if that person would fit in at the Chapman family reunion. Reducing a selection for a vitally important office to a demographic formula is not the path to sound constitutional interpretation.
Conservatives rightly lamented Sonia Sotomayor's suggestion that female Hispanic judges make better decisions than white males. At National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez ridiculed the odd notion, raised by one commentator, that her diabetes would deepen her judicial wisdom.
This is not to deny the value of a diversity of backgrounds and experiences in an institution like the Supreme Court. We all understand the world through our personal environment, and the more exposure we have to other people's experiences and perspectives, the better off we are.
A daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a housing project may have insights into police abuses or the drug war or regulation of taxicabs that a white man who grew up middle-class in Indiana would not. The white guy, however, might also know some things she wouldn't.
But that is a long way from asserting, as Sotomayor has, that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." A wise Latina, like a wise WASP male, understands she has no monopoly on rich experiences or vital truths. She values what her life has offered without letting herself be constrained by it. If she's a judge, she recognizes her obligation to strive for impartiality.
So conservatives have reason to be wary of Sotomayor's approach to judging. But it's a little late for most of them to decry identity politics. Few objections were heard from Republicans in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush decided that the ideal person to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall, the court's first black justice, was Clarence Thomas, who just happened to be black as well.
Bush did his best to have it both ways. He insisted that race was irrelevant and that Thomas was simply the "best qualified" candidate in the country. But he also said, "(I)f credit accrues to him for coming up through a tough life as a minority in this country, so much the better."
Back then, conservatives played the identity game gingerly, as if they were slightly embarrassed. But they have since learned to make the most of it. The most recent and regrettable example is Sarah Palin, lustily cheered by Republican audiences last year not because she had the credentials and ability to step into the presidency, but because she was the Right Kind of Person.
First, she was a woman, picked to attract disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, as Palin shamelessly highlighted: "Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."
Second, she was not one of those effete urban elitists but a real American -- small-town girl, beauty queen, hockey mom, "Bible-believing Christian" (as she put it), mother of five and moose hunter.
Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., said she was controversial because "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Palin herself celebrated her brethren from small towns, which she called "all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."
Of course it's useful to include the perspective of small-town residents in formulating policy, just as it's a good idea to consider the impact of laws on Latinos. But to imagine that either group -- or any group -- has a unique claim to wisdom or goodness is only to prove that no group is immune to foolishness.
Pelosi vs. CIA: Why It Matters
Larry Elder
Thursday, May 28, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA "misled" her about waterboarding.
What difference does it make, in the grand scheme of things, whether Pelosi is telling the truth? Maybe the CIA did; maybe the CIA did not. So what? Well, it makes a great deal of difference -- and not only because if true, the CIA didn't just "mislead" Pelosi but also committed a crime.
People like Pelosi, who once supported waterboarding -- just like the folks who once supported the war -- now attempt to rewrite history.
The country turned against former President George W. Bush and Republicans because of the war in Iraq. Yes, many Americans reversed their previous support of the war because of its unexpectedly high human and monetary costs. Yes, many turned against the war because, in its early stages, Iraq seemed on the verge of civil war. To many, the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein backfired -- and made America less, not more, safe.
But what turned growing unease over the war into outright disdain for Bush? As to the case for war -- the assumption that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction -- many Americans feel flat-out lied to.
This brings us to waterboarding.
Like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, waterboarding serves as a metaphor for the former President's alleged deceitfulness and villainy. Pelosi denounces waterboarding as torture, yet another outrage by the lying, scheming, manipulative Bush administration.
Pelosi, at first, said she knew absolutely nothing about the administration's use of this "enhanced interrogation technique." The CIA disputes this. But by her own admission, the agency told her that it was considering using waterboarding. Wasn't that enough for the speaker to have thundered her disapproval? What about a letter of protest to the Bush White House? What about moving to cut off funds to prevent the agency from employing a technique that she purportedly finds so offensive?
The CIA pushed back. The agency said that it informed Pelosi, who received briefings, that it not only intended to use waterboarding but, in fact, had used waterboarding. Former CIA Director Porter Goss said that the CIA provided accurate information to Pelosi. Goss further said that the only objection during the briefing was the concern as to whether the CIA was going far enough.
Current CIA Director Leon Panetta agreed with Goss. In a memo to CIA employees, Panetta said, "CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.'" Panetta also wrote: "Our task is to tell it like it is -- even if that's not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it."
Now, the retreat.
Before declaring in a news conference that she no longer wants to stress the matter, Pelosi praised the CIA. Pelosi said, "My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe." Does her respect extend to former CIA head George Tenet? Tenet served under former Presidents Clinton and Bush. As for believing Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, Tenet described the case as a "slam-dunk." Does she now "respect" that he made that assertion in good faith?
So, what does all of this tell us?
It tells us that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, most Americans -- including the Democratic leadership in Congress -- wanted to prevent another attack. Despite their newfound "outrage" over torture, people like Speaker Nancy Pelosi understood, accepted and even encouraged harsh interrogation techniques to prevent another attack.
As to the case for war, all 16 intelligence agencies concluded -- at the highest level of probability -- that Saddam Hussein possessed those stockpiles. Yet people like Sen. Ted Kennedy said things like "week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie." And many Americans -- especially those predisposed to believe the worst of the Bush administration -- completely bought it. "Bush lied, people died" became a refrain uttered endlessly by Bush haters.
But Bush didn't lie -- and the Democrats know it. Indeed, to extricate herself from Torture-gate, Pelosi now compliments the CIA, the very agency Bush relied on in making the case for war.
But public opinion turned against the war. Then waterboarding became "torture." And Bush became not simply a commander in chief who, in good faith, relied on near unanimous but faulty intelligence. He became, as then-Minority Leader Harry Reid said, "a loser" and "a liar."
Disgusting.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA "misled" her about waterboarding.
What difference does it make, in the grand scheme of things, whether Pelosi is telling the truth? Maybe the CIA did; maybe the CIA did not. So what? Well, it makes a great deal of difference -- and not only because if true, the CIA didn't just "mislead" Pelosi but also committed a crime.
People like Pelosi, who once supported waterboarding -- just like the folks who once supported the war -- now attempt to rewrite history.
The country turned against former President George W. Bush and Republicans because of the war in Iraq. Yes, many Americans reversed their previous support of the war because of its unexpectedly high human and monetary costs. Yes, many turned against the war because, in its early stages, Iraq seemed on the verge of civil war. To many, the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein backfired -- and made America less, not more, safe.
But what turned growing unease over the war into outright disdain for Bush? As to the case for war -- the assumption that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction -- many Americans feel flat-out lied to.
This brings us to waterboarding.
Like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, waterboarding serves as a metaphor for the former President's alleged deceitfulness and villainy. Pelosi denounces waterboarding as torture, yet another outrage by the lying, scheming, manipulative Bush administration.
Pelosi, at first, said she knew absolutely nothing about the administration's use of this "enhanced interrogation technique." The CIA disputes this. But by her own admission, the agency told her that it was considering using waterboarding. Wasn't that enough for the speaker to have thundered her disapproval? What about a letter of protest to the Bush White House? What about moving to cut off funds to prevent the agency from employing a technique that she purportedly finds so offensive?
The CIA pushed back. The agency said that it informed Pelosi, who received briefings, that it not only intended to use waterboarding but, in fact, had used waterboarding. Former CIA Director Porter Goss said that the CIA provided accurate information to Pelosi. Goss further said that the only objection during the briefing was the concern as to whether the CIA was going far enough.
Current CIA Director Leon Panetta agreed with Goss. In a memo to CIA employees, Panetta said, "CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.'" Panetta also wrote: "Our task is to tell it like it is -- even if that's not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it."
Now, the retreat.
Before declaring in a news conference that she no longer wants to stress the matter, Pelosi praised the CIA. Pelosi said, "My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe." Does her respect extend to former CIA head George Tenet? Tenet served under former Presidents Clinton and Bush. As for believing Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, Tenet described the case as a "slam-dunk." Does she now "respect" that he made that assertion in good faith?
So, what does all of this tell us?
It tells us that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, most Americans -- including the Democratic leadership in Congress -- wanted to prevent another attack. Despite their newfound "outrage" over torture, people like Speaker Nancy Pelosi understood, accepted and even encouraged harsh interrogation techniques to prevent another attack.
As to the case for war, all 16 intelligence agencies concluded -- at the highest level of probability -- that Saddam Hussein possessed those stockpiles. Yet people like Sen. Ted Kennedy said things like "week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie." And many Americans -- especially those predisposed to believe the worst of the Bush administration -- completely bought it. "Bush lied, people died" became a refrain uttered endlessly by Bush haters.
But Bush didn't lie -- and the Democrats know it. Indeed, to extricate herself from Torture-gate, Pelosi now compliments the CIA, the very agency Bush relied on in making the case for war.
But public opinion turned against the war. Then waterboarding became "torture." And Bush became not simply a commander in chief who, in good faith, relied on near unanimous but faulty intelligence. He became, as then-Minority Leader Harry Reid said, "a loser" and "a liar."
Disgusting.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Empathy v. Impartiality
Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Why make this complicated?
President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the right Hispanic woman for the job. Here's the oath Supreme Court justices must take:
"I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
Contrast that with Obama's insistence that the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles" is the key qualification for a Supreme Court justice. According to White House talking points, Judge Sotomayor's "American story" of humble origins -- she was raised in the South Bronx -- best prepares her for the high court because it shows "she understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts."
Obama says law and precedent should determine rulings in "95 percent of the cases." But in the really hard and important cases, justices should go with their heart. "In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy."
Now, keep in mind that 5 percent of Supreme Court cases isn't everything, but it's nearly 100 percent of what we argue about as a country. For the hard cases Americans care most about, Obama says empathy should rule.
So, what's wrong with empathy?
Well, nothing. Empathy is a fine thing, and all decent people should employ it, including Supreme Court justices.
But Obama has something specific in mind when he talks about empathy. He wants the justice's oath to in effect be rewritten. Judges must administer justice with respect to persons, they must be partial to the poor, and so on.
I don't think this is open to much debate. When Obama voted against Chief Justice John Roberts' confirmation, he said that Roberts didn't have the "heart" to vote the right way in those 5 percent of cases. Rather than Roberts the Cruel, Obama explained, "we need somebody who's got the heart -- the empathy -- to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old -- and that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges." Cue Sotomayor the Empathic.
The reasoning here is a riot of dubious assumptions. Obama and Sotomayor both assume that a firsthand understanding of the plight of the poor or the African-American or the gay or the old will automatically result in justices voting a certain (liberal) way. "I would hope," Sotomayor said in 2001, "that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." This is not only deeply offensive, it is also nonsense on stilts. Clarence Thomas understands what it is like to be poor and black better than any justice who has ever sat on the bench. How's that working out for liberals?
Of course, liberals say that if you don't agree with their policy prescriptions on, say, racial quotas or abortion, it's because you don't care as much as they do about minorities or women. Which is why they've demonized Thomas as a villainous race-traitor. This, too, is aggressively stupid. But even if it were true, why are we talking about policy preferences and the courts? Judges aren't supposed to have policy preferences, despite Ms. Sotomayor's insistence that the courts are "where policy is made."
More important, who says conservatives are against judicial empathy? I, for one, am all for it. I'm for empathy for the party most deserving of justice before the Supreme Court, within the bounds of the law and Constitution. If that means siding with a poor black man, great. If that means siding with a rich white one, that's great too. The same holds for gays and gun owners, single mothers and media conglomerates. We should all rejoice when justices fulfill their oaths and give everyone a fair hearing, even if that's now out of fashion in the age of Obama.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Why make this complicated?
President Obama prefers Supreme Court justices who will violate their oath of office. And he hopes Sonia Sotomayor is the right Hispanic woman for the job. Here's the oath Supreme Court justices must take:
"I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as (title) under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."
Contrast that with Obama's insistence that the "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles" is the key qualification for a Supreme Court justice. According to White House talking points, Judge Sotomayor's "American story" of humble origins -- she was raised in the South Bronx -- best prepares her for the high court because it shows "she understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts."
Obama says law and precedent should determine rulings in "95 percent of the cases." But in the really hard and important cases, justices should go with their heart. "In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one's deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy."
Now, keep in mind that 5 percent of Supreme Court cases isn't everything, but it's nearly 100 percent of what we argue about as a country. For the hard cases Americans care most about, Obama says empathy should rule.
So, what's wrong with empathy?
Well, nothing. Empathy is a fine thing, and all decent people should employ it, including Supreme Court justices.
But Obama has something specific in mind when he talks about empathy. He wants the justice's oath to in effect be rewritten. Judges must administer justice with respect to persons, they must be partial to the poor, and so on.
I don't think this is open to much debate. When Obama voted against Chief Justice John Roberts' confirmation, he said that Roberts didn't have the "heart" to vote the right way in those 5 percent of cases. Rather than Roberts the Cruel, Obama explained, "we need somebody who's got the heart -- the empathy -- to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old -- and that's the criteria by which I'll be selecting my judges." Cue Sotomayor the Empathic.
The reasoning here is a riot of dubious assumptions. Obama and Sotomayor both assume that a firsthand understanding of the plight of the poor or the African-American or the gay or the old will automatically result in justices voting a certain (liberal) way. "I would hope," Sotomayor said in 2001, "that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." This is not only deeply offensive, it is also nonsense on stilts. Clarence Thomas understands what it is like to be poor and black better than any justice who has ever sat on the bench. How's that working out for liberals?
Of course, liberals say that if you don't agree with their policy prescriptions on, say, racial quotas or abortion, it's because you don't care as much as they do about minorities or women. Which is why they've demonized Thomas as a villainous race-traitor. This, too, is aggressively stupid. But even if it were true, why are we talking about policy preferences and the courts? Judges aren't supposed to have policy preferences, despite Ms. Sotomayor's insistence that the courts are "where policy is made."
More important, who says conservatives are against judicial empathy? I, for one, am all for it. I'm for empathy for the party most deserving of justice before the Supreme Court, within the bounds of the law and Constitution. If that means siding with a poor black man, great. If that means siding with a rich white one, that's great too. The same holds for gays and gun owners, single mothers and media conglomerates. We should all rejoice when justices fulfill their oaths and give everyone a fair hearing, even if that's now out of fashion in the age of Obama.
Not all "Compelling Personal Stories" are Equal
Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination into a personal Olympic event. Pay no attention to her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later.
And, oh, by the way, did you hear that she was poor?
It's a "compelling personal story," as we heard 20,956 times on Tuesday. Sotomayor's a "real" person. Why, she even read Nancy Drew as a young girl, President Obama told us. She's "faced down barriers, overcome the odds and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago," Obama said.
If Sotomayor were auditioning to be Oprah Winfrey's fill-in host, I'd understand the over-the-top hyping of her life narrative. But isn't anybody on Sotomayor's side the least bit embarrassed by all this liberal condescension?
Republicans are not allowed to mention Sotomayor's ethnicity lest they be branded bigots, but every Democrat on cable television harped on her multicultural "diversity" and "obstacle"-climbing. Obama made sure to roll his r's when noting that her parents came from Puerrrrto Rrrrico. New York Sen. Charles Schumer stated outright: "It's long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court." Color-coded tokenism dominated the headlines, with blaring references to Sotomayor as the high court's potential "first Hispanic."
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- one of the leading Democrats tasked with guiding Sotomayor through the nomination process -- carried the "compelling personal story" talking points to the tokenist extreme in an interview on Fox News:
"If you look at what this woman has been through, and the obstacles that she has had to overcome, I think she does have a richly, uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country," McCaskill asserted. "Overcoming incredible odds, and I think that is an experience that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American, trying to grow up in public housing, reaching for scholarships, reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor, all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I don't think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience."
Clever. Challenging Sotomayor's credentials and extreme views on race and the law is not merely anti-Hispanic. It's anti-American!
More significantly, McCaskill waved the high-hurdle card after being asked to defend Sotomayor's infamous statement at a 2001 University of California at Berkeley speech asserting brown-skin moral authority: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." McCaskill actually denied that Sotomayor had made the remarks, then argued the words were taken out of context.
You want context? It's even worse than that sound bite. As National Journal legal analyst Stuart Taylor reported, "Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere 'aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.' And she suggested that 'inherent physiological or cultural differences' may help explain why 'our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.'" The full speech was reprinted in something called the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. "La Raza" is Spanish for "The Race." Imagine if a white male Republican court nominee had published in a law review called "The Race."
The selective elevation of hardship as primary qualification demeans the entire judiciary. If personal turmoil makes one "incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country," let's put reality-show couple Jon and Kate Gosselin on the bench. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their "compelling personal story" of life with eight children on television. It's a "richly, uniquely American experience" of facing obstacles and overcoming the odds. Get them robes and gavels, stat.
The lesson is that not all compelling personal stories are equal. McCaskill's assertion that "overcoming incredible odds" is "new to the courts" is ridiculous. Is she arguing that Thurgood Marshall, Felix Frankfurter and Sandra Day O'Connor faced lower hurdles than Sotomayor? And how about Clarence Thomas, a descendant of slaves who grew up in abject poverty in the South without a father? His crime, of course, was embracing the wrong ideology. So his incredible set of odds and obstacles don't count in left-wing eyes.
Democrats are eager to celebrate diversity, you see, as long as the diversely pigmented pledge allegiance to the Left for life.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination into a personal Olympic event. Pay no attention to her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later.
And, oh, by the way, did you hear that she was poor?
It's a "compelling personal story," as we heard 20,956 times on Tuesday. Sotomayor's a "real" person. Why, she even read Nancy Drew as a young girl, President Obama told us. She's "faced down barriers, overcome the odds and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago," Obama said.
If Sotomayor were auditioning to be Oprah Winfrey's fill-in host, I'd understand the over-the-top hyping of her life narrative. But isn't anybody on Sotomayor's side the least bit embarrassed by all this liberal condescension?
Republicans are not allowed to mention Sotomayor's ethnicity lest they be branded bigots, but every Democrat on cable television harped on her multicultural "diversity" and "obstacle"-climbing. Obama made sure to roll his r's when noting that her parents came from Puerrrrto Rrrrico. New York Sen. Charles Schumer stated outright: "It's long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court." Color-coded tokenism dominated the headlines, with blaring references to Sotomayor as the high court's potential "first Hispanic."
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- one of the leading Democrats tasked with guiding Sotomayor through the nomination process -- carried the "compelling personal story" talking points to the tokenist extreme in an interview on Fox News:
"If you look at what this woman has been through, and the obstacles that she has had to overcome, I think she does have a richly, uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country," McCaskill asserted. "Overcoming incredible odds, and I think that is an experience that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American, trying to grow up in public housing, reaching for scholarships, reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor, all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I don't think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience."
Clever. Challenging Sotomayor's credentials and extreme views on race and the law is not merely anti-Hispanic. It's anti-American!
More significantly, McCaskill waved the high-hurdle card after being asked to defend Sotomayor's infamous statement at a 2001 University of California at Berkeley speech asserting brown-skin moral authority: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." McCaskill actually denied that Sotomayor had made the remarks, then argued the words were taken out of context.
You want context? It's even worse than that sound bite. As National Journal legal analyst Stuart Taylor reported, "Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere 'aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.' And she suggested that 'inherent physiological or cultural differences' may help explain why 'our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.'" The full speech was reprinted in something called the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. "La Raza" is Spanish for "The Race." Imagine if a white male Republican court nominee had published in a law review called "The Race."
The selective elevation of hardship as primary qualification demeans the entire judiciary. If personal turmoil makes one "incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country," let's put reality-show couple Jon and Kate Gosselin on the bench. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their "compelling personal story" of life with eight children on television. It's a "richly, uniquely American experience" of facing obstacles and overcoming the odds. Get them robes and gavels, stat.
The lesson is that not all compelling personal stories are equal. McCaskill's assertion that "overcoming incredible odds" is "new to the courts" is ridiculous. Is she arguing that Thurgood Marshall, Felix Frankfurter and Sandra Day O'Connor faced lower hurdles than Sotomayor? And how about Clarence Thomas, a descendant of slaves who grew up in abject poverty in the South without a father? His crime, of course, was embracing the wrong ideology. So his incredible set of odds and obstacles don't count in left-wing eyes.
Democrats are eager to celebrate diversity, you see, as long as the diversely pigmented pledge allegiance to the Left for life.
Sotomayor: "Empathy" in Action
Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
It is one of the signs of our times that so many in the media are focusing on the life story of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States.
You might think that this was some kind of popularity contest, instead of a weighty decision about someone whose impact on the fundamental law of the nation will extend for decades after Barack Obama has come and gone.
Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think.
If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find-- even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?
If it were you who was going to be lying on that operating table with his heart cut open, you wouldn't give a tinker's damn about somebody's struggle or somebody else's privileges.
The Supreme Court of the United States is in effect operating on the heart of our nation-- the Constitution and the statutes and government policies that all of us must live under.
Barack Obama's repeated claim that a Supreme Court justice should have "empathy" with various groups has raised red flags that we ignore at our peril-- and at the peril of our children and grandchildren.
"Empathy" for particular groups can be reconciled with "equal justice under law"-- the motto over the entrance to the Supreme Court-- only with smooth words. But not in reality. President Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor but words do not change realities.
Nothing demonstrates the fatal dangers from judicial "empathy" more than Judge Sotomayor's decision in a 2008 case involving firemen who took an exam for promotion. After the racial mix of those who passed that test turned out to be predominantly white, with only a few blacks and Hispanics, the results were thrown out.
When this action by the local civil service authorities was taken to court and eventually reached the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Sotomayor did not give the case even the courtesy of a spelling out of the issues. She backed those who threw out the test results. Apparently she didn't have "empathy" with those predominantly white males who had been cheated out of promotions they had earned.
Fellow 2nd Circuit Court judge Jose Cabranes commented on the short shrift given to the serious issues in this case. It so happens that he too is Hispanic, but apparently he does not decide legal issues on the basis of "empathy" or lack thereof.
This was not an isolated matter for Judge Sotomayor. Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, she said that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging."
Moreover, this was not something she lamented. On the contrary, she added, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
No doubt the political spinmasters will try to spin this to mean something innocent. But the cold fact is that this is a poisonous doctrine for any judge, much less a justice of the Supreme Court.
That kind of empathy would for all practical purposes repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to all Americans.
What would the political spinmasters say if some white man said that a white male would more often reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic female?
For those who believe in the rule of law, Barack Obama used the words "rule of law" in introducing his nominee. For those who take his words as gospel, even when his own actions are directly the opposite of his words, that may be enough to let him put this dangerous woman on the Supreme Court.
Even if her confirmation cannot be stopped, it is important for Senators to warn of the dangers, which will only get worse if such nominations sail through the Senate smoothly.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
It is one of the signs of our times that so many in the media are focusing on the life story of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States.
You might think that this was some kind of popularity contest, instead of a weighty decision about someone whose impact on the fundamental law of the nation will extend for decades after Barack Obama has come and gone.
Much is being made of the fact that Sonia Sotomayor had to struggle to rise in the world. But stop and think.
If you were going to have open heart surgery, would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who was chosen because he had to struggle to get where he is or by the best surgeon you could find-- even if he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had every advantage that money and social position could offer?
If it were you who was going to be lying on that operating table with his heart cut open, you wouldn't give a tinker's damn about somebody's struggle or somebody else's privileges.
The Supreme Court of the United States is in effect operating on the heart of our nation-- the Constitution and the statutes and government policies that all of us must live under.
Barack Obama's repeated claim that a Supreme Court justice should have "empathy" with various groups has raised red flags that we ignore at our peril-- and at the peril of our children and grandchildren.
"Empathy" for particular groups can be reconciled with "equal justice under law"-- the motto over the entrance to the Supreme Court-- only with smooth words. But not in reality. President Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor but words do not change realities.
Nothing demonstrates the fatal dangers from judicial "empathy" more than Judge Sotomayor's decision in a 2008 case involving firemen who took an exam for promotion. After the racial mix of those who passed that test turned out to be predominantly white, with only a few blacks and Hispanics, the results were thrown out.
When this action by the local civil service authorities was taken to court and eventually reached the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Sotomayor did not give the case even the courtesy of a spelling out of the issues. She backed those who threw out the test results. Apparently she didn't have "empathy" with those predominantly white males who had been cheated out of promotions they had earned.
Fellow 2nd Circuit Court judge Jose Cabranes commented on the short shrift given to the serious issues in this case. It so happens that he too is Hispanic, but apparently he does not decide legal issues on the basis of "empathy" or lack thereof.
This was not an isolated matter for Judge Sotomayor. Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, she said that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging."
Moreover, this was not something she lamented. On the contrary, she added, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
No doubt the political spinmasters will try to spin this to mean something innocent. But the cold fact is that this is a poisonous doctrine for any judge, much less a justice of the Supreme Court.
That kind of empathy would for all practical purposes repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees "equal protection of the laws" to all Americans.
What would the political spinmasters say if some white man said that a white male would more often reach a better conclusion than a Hispanic female?
For those who believe in the rule of law, Barack Obama used the words "rule of law" in introducing his nominee. For those who take his words as gospel, even when his own actions are directly the opposite of his words, that may be enough to let him put this dangerous woman on the Supreme Court.
Even if her confirmation cannot be stopped, it is important for Senators to warn of the dangers, which will only get worse if such nominations sail through the Senate smoothly.
The People's Right! to Self-Governance
Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Within a decade, same-sex marriage probably will be legal in California. Thanks to the California Supreme Court 6-1 ruling on Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, the law will be changed in the proper way -- not by judicial fiat, but with California voters determining whether, when and how best to broaden the state's marriage laws.
In a 4-3 decision last May, the court had ruled that California's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, as the state's civil-union laws conferred "significantly unequal treatment" for same-sex couples by denying them the right to call themselves married. In November, voters struck back by passing, with 52 percent of the vote, Proposition 8, which changed the state Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Tuesday, the state Supreme Court did what it had to do by recognizing the people's new constitutional mandate.
As Chief Justice Ronald George wrote in the majority opinion, the issue before the court was the "right of the people" to change the state Constitution -- not "to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution." The court also upheld the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November, as Proposition 8 was not retroactive.
Gay-rights advocates have denounced the 6-1 ruling as stripping away their equal rights. Nonsense. California same-sex marriage never was equal because federal law failed to recognize same-sex unions. Besides, as George noted, under Proposition 8 "same-sex couples continue to enjoy the same substantive core benefits afforded by those state constitutional rights as those enjoyed by opposite-sex couples."
Some activists may choose to berate Proposition 8 supporters as haters and bigots, but they do so at the cost of coming across as haters themselves.
Besides, the legal arguments against Proposition 8 were not so high-minded. Opponents argued that Proposition 8 constituted a "revision" of the state Constitution -- and hence required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or constitutional convention to make it onto the ballot. In the name of one group's civil rights, Proposition 8 opponents were happy to strip Californians of their right to control their state Constitution.
On hearing of the court's decision, Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, announced, "But our path ahead is now clear. We will go back to the ballot box and we will win."
He certainly has the right to take his group's case before voters. But if gay activists want the support of the majority of Californians, they should exhibit some respect and tolerance toward those with whom they disagree.
Since 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom opened up City Hall to same-sex marriages in violation of state law, same-sex marriage supporters have demonstrated that if they didn't like a law, they could break it. Then, when the California Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 2008, Newsom famously crowed, "This door's wide open now. It's going to happen -- whether you like it or not."
After Proposition 8 passed, opponents targeted citizen donors to the "yes" campaign for harassment. Their threats of retaliation and boycotts -- which forced a handful of Proposition 8 donors to resign from their private-sector jobs -- fed the suspicion that if same-sex marriage is legalized, any dissent against the practice would not be tolerated.
And their selectivity has been breathtaking. After all, Barack Obama ran for president in support of civil unions, not same-sex marriage. Yet as activists picked on relatively small Proposition 8 donors who did not have the clout to fight back, somehow Obama can keep his job.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Within a decade, same-sex marriage probably will be legal in California. Thanks to the California Supreme Court 6-1 ruling on Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, the law will be changed in the proper way -- not by judicial fiat, but with California voters determining whether, when and how best to broaden the state's marriage laws.
In a 4-3 decision last May, the court had ruled that California's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, as the state's civil-union laws conferred "significantly unequal treatment" for same-sex couples by denying them the right to call themselves married. In November, voters struck back by passing, with 52 percent of the vote, Proposition 8, which changed the state Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
Tuesday, the state Supreme Court did what it had to do by recognizing the people's new constitutional mandate.
As Chief Justice Ronald George wrote in the majority opinion, the issue before the court was the "right of the people" to change the state Constitution -- not "to determine whether the provision at issue is wise or sound as a matter of policy or whether we, as individuals, believe it should be a part of the California Constitution." The court also upheld the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November, as Proposition 8 was not retroactive.
Gay-rights advocates have denounced the 6-1 ruling as stripping away their equal rights. Nonsense. California same-sex marriage never was equal because federal law failed to recognize same-sex unions. Besides, as George noted, under Proposition 8 "same-sex couples continue to enjoy the same substantive core benefits afforded by those state constitutional rights as those enjoyed by opposite-sex couples."
Some activists may choose to berate Proposition 8 supporters as haters and bigots, but they do so at the cost of coming across as haters themselves.
Besides, the legal arguments against Proposition 8 were not so high-minded. Opponents argued that Proposition 8 constituted a "revision" of the state Constitution -- and hence required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature or constitutional convention to make it onto the ballot. In the name of one group's civil rights, Proposition 8 opponents were happy to strip Californians of their right to control their state Constitution.
On hearing of the court's decision, Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, announced, "But our path ahead is now clear. We will go back to the ballot box and we will win."
He certainly has the right to take his group's case before voters. But if gay activists want the support of the majority of Californians, they should exhibit some respect and tolerance toward those with whom they disagree.
Since 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom opened up City Hall to same-sex marriages in violation of state law, same-sex marriage supporters have demonstrated that if they didn't like a law, they could break it. Then, when the California Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 2008, Newsom famously crowed, "This door's wide open now. It's going to happen -- whether you like it or not."
After Proposition 8 passed, opponents targeted citizen donors to the "yes" campaign for harassment. Their threats of retaliation and boycotts -- which forced a handful of Proposition 8 donors to resign from their private-sector jobs -- fed the suspicion that if same-sex marriage is legalized, any dissent against the practice would not be tolerated.
And their selectivity has been breathtaking. After all, Barack Obama ran for president in support of civil unions, not same-sex marriage. Yet as activists picked on relatively small Proposition 8 donors who did not have the clout to fight back, somehow Obama can keep his job.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Advice on Consent
National Review Online
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is female, Hispanic, liberal, and mediocre. Conservatives should draw attention to the third adjective while understanding that the first two are likely to be politically decisive during her confirmation hearings.
Sotomayor’s liberalism would not constitute a reason for denying her a seat on the Supreme Court if it merely consisted of a set of policy positions identical to those of the Senate’s 15 most liberal members. Unfortunately, liberalism has for some time now incorporated a tacit judicial philosophy in which the goal is to impose policies as left-wing as a judge can get away with. Sotomayor seems to march to that beat. More to the point, perhaps, she has shown no signs of marching to any other one.
Judges who decide cases in this manner abuse their office and undermine the rule of law. They also generate policies that are harmful to our economy, dangerous to our national security, and destructive to our social fabric. Liberal activism on the bench has these effects even when the offending judges are geniuses. The nominee’s approach to judging is more important than her IQ, and it is on that subject that senators ought to be trying to shed light. And they should take their time doing it. Thanks to years of activism, Supreme Court justices have more power than most senators. We should spend at least as much time learning how they would exercise it as we do for Senate candidates.
Barring some shocking revelation, we know the outcome of these hearings. Some Republicans say that we could have done worse: Given what we know of her judicial craftsmanship and temperament, she is unlikely to have influence on the Court beyond her vote. But such musings are neither here nor there. The choice for Republican senators is not between Sotomayor and some hypothetical more dangerous Obama nominee; it is between her being confirmed with their consent and her being confirmed without it.
That consent should probably not be given, and should certainly be withheld for now.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is female, Hispanic, liberal, and mediocre. Conservatives should draw attention to the third adjective while understanding that the first two are likely to be politically decisive during her confirmation hearings.
Sotomayor’s liberalism would not constitute a reason for denying her a seat on the Supreme Court if it merely consisted of a set of policy positions identical to those of the Senate’s 15 most liberal members. Unfortunately, liberalism has for some time now incorporated a tacit judicial philosophy in which the goal is to impose policies as left-wing as a judge can get away with. Sotomayor seems to march to that beat. More to the point, perhaps, she has shown no signs of marching to any other one.
Judges who decide cases in this manner abuse their office and undermine the rule of law. They also generate policies that are harmful to our economy, dangerous to our national security, and destructive to our social fabric. Liberal activism on the bench has these effects even when the offending judges are geniuses. The nominee’s approach to judging is more important than her IQ, and it is on that subject that senators ought to be trying to shed light. And they should take their time doing it. Thanks to years of activism, Supreme Court justices have more power than most senators. We should spend at least as much time learning how they would exercise it as we do for Senate candidates.
Barring some shocking revelation, we know the outcome of these hearings. Some Republicans say that we could have done worse: Given what we know of her judicial craftsmanship and temperament, she is unlikely to have influence on the Court beyond her vote. But such musings are neither here nor there. The choice for Republican senators is not between Sotomayor and some hypothetical more dangerous Obama nominee; it is between her being confirmed with their consent and her being confirmed without it.
That consent should probably not be given, and should certainly be withheld for now.
A Bad Day for Impartiality
Obama uses empathy as a code word for judicial liberalism.
By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
It was a historic day when Pres. Barack Obama announced his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. No president had ever nominated a Hispanic woman. Nor had a recent president — or his nominee — expressed less genuine interest in the traditional craft of judging.
Impartiality has been supplanted by empathy. The old-fashioned virtue of objectivity — redolent of dusty law books and the unromantic task of parsing the law and facts — is giving way to an inherently politicized notion of judging based on feelings. Lady Justice is to slip her blindfold and let her decisions be influenced by her life experiences and personal predilections.
Obama and Sotomayor embrace this method of judging with gusto, even though it is deeply antithetical to justice properly understood. This is why Sotomayor is such a radical choice. Not only will she define the court’s left flank, she represents a judicial philosophy that is neither truly judicial nor a philosophy. The political outcome — and the personal biases that drive it — is paramount.
In introducing Sotomayor, Obama said he valued “a rigorous intellect” and “a recognition of the limits of the judicial role,” before pronouncing them both “insufficient.” A justice must have been tested “by hardship and misfortune,” Obama stipulated, so that he has “a common touch and a sense of compassion.”
It’s as if he wants a justice who can break the tension in an oral argument about the intricacies of antitrust law with engaging sports banter. The “Would you want to have a beer with him?” test reasonably applies to a politician, but to a black-robed justice charged with interpreting the Constitution? Justice Clarence Thomas is delightful company. Does that make his opinions any better or worse?
To complement his essentially political conception of the court, Obama has an essentially political conception of a justice. He voted against John Roberts despite Roberts’s qualifications and love of the law. Roberts failed the political test, defined by Obama as “one’s deepest values,” “the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.”
Obama uses empathy as a code word for judicial liberalism, and few nominees could be as starkly empathetic as Sotomayor. She has the requisite inspiring background. She has been a reliable liberal vote (never mind that the Supreme Court has been singularly unimpressed by her reasoning in cases that have reached it). And she believes that her background is one of her most important qualifications.
In a rambling 2001 speech, she disagreed with a colleague who thought judges should transcend their “personal sympathies and prejudices.” Sotomayor said, “I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases.” She argued that “the aspiration to impartiality is just that — it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.” In sum, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
This stunning statement of race and gender determinism perhaps explains Sotomayor’s decision in the New Haven firefighter case now before the Supreme Court. A white firefighter studied for an exam to get a promotion. He bought $1,000 worth of books and had someone read them onto audiotapes because he’s dyslexic. He passed, but the city declined to promote him because no blacks had qualified for promotion.
Sotomayor thought this blatantly race-conscious action passed constitutional muster. Does her 2001 speech mean that she would have ruled differently if she were white, dyslexic, or a working-class firefighter struggling to get ahead? If so, she is manifestly unfit for the highest court in a country that puts the law above tribal loyalties.
Sotomayor’s nomination represents an extraordinary personal accomplishment and an important symbolic affirmation for Latinos. Her confirmation, though, would be another step toward eviscerating the constitutional function of the Supreme Court, as empathy trumps impartiality.
By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
It was a historic day when Pres. Barack Obama announced his nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. No president had ever nominated a Hispanic woman. Nor had a recent president — or his nominee — expressed less genuine interest in the traditional craft of judging.
Impartiality has been supplanted by empathy. The old-fashioned virtue of objectivity — redolent of dusty law books and the unromantic task of parsing the law and facts — is giving way to an inherently politicized notion of judging based on feelings. Lady Justice is to slip her blindfold and let her decisions be influenced by her life experiences and personal predilections.
Obama and Sotomayor embrace this method of judging with gusto, even though it is deeply antithetical to justice properly understood. This is why Sotomayor is such a radical choice. Not only will she define the court’s left flank, she represents a judicial philosophy that is neither truly judicial nor a philosophy. The political outcome — and the personal biases that drive it — is paramount.
In introducing Sotomayor, Obama said he valued “a rigorous intellect” and “a recognition of the limits of the judicial role,” before pronouncing them both “insufficient.” A justice must have been tested “by hardship and misfortune,” Obama stipulated, so that he has “a common touch and a sense of compassion.”
It’s as if he wants a justice who can break the tension in an oral argument about the intricacies of antitrust law with engaging sports banter. The “Would you want to have a beer with him?” test reasonably applies to a politician, but to a black-robed justice charged with interpreting the Constitution? Justice Clarence Thomas is delightful company. Does that make his opinions any better or worse?
To complement his essentially political conception of the court, Obama has an essentially political conception of a justice. He voted against John Roberts despite Roberts’s qualifications and love of the law. Roberts failed the political test, defined by Obama as “one’s deepest values,” “the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.”
Obama uses empathy as a code word for judicial liberalism, and few nominees could be as starkly empathetic as Sotomayor. She has the requisite inspiring background. She has been a reliable liberal vote (never mind that the Supreme Court has been singularly unimpressed by her reasoning in cases that have reached it). And she believes that her background is one of her most important qualifications.
In a rambling 2001 speech, she disagreed with a colleague who thought judges should transcend their “personal sympathies and prejudices.” Sotomayor said, “I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases.” She argued that “the aspiration to impartiality is just that — it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.” In sum, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
This stunning statement of race and gender determinism perhaps explains Sotomayor’s decision in the New Haven firefighter case now before the Supreme Court. A white firefighter studied for an exam to get a promotion. He bought $1,000 worth of books and had someone read them onto audiotapes because he’s dyslexic. He passed, but the city declined to promote him because no blacks had qualified for promotion.
Sotomayor thought this blatantly race-conscious action passed constitutional muster. Does her 2001 speech mean that she would have ruled differently if she were white, dyslexic, or a working-class firefighter struggling to get ahead? If so, she is manifestly unfit for the highest court in a country that puts the law above tribal loyalties.
Sotomayor’s nomination represents an extraordinary personal accomplishment and an important symbolic affirmation for Latinos. Her confirmation, though, would be another step toward eviscerating the constitutional function of the Supreme Court, as empathy trumps impartiality.
Sotomayor, Reverse Empathy and the Rule of Law
David Limbaugh
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
True to form, President Barack Obama -- in his remarks introducing his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor -- said he was doing one thing while doing the exact opposite. He articulated his criteria for the optimal nominee yet chose someone who falls squarely outside those criteria -- as best we can tell.
But what's all the fuss? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little conservative minds. Obama's mesmerized audiences are not supposed to pay attention to the meaning and context of his words, only to their aesthetic appeal and to the tonal qualities and modulation in his voice.
Obama said a Supreme Court nominee's two most important qualities are her rigorous intellect and mastery of the law and her recognition of the limits of the judicial role -- that a judge's job is to interpret law, not to make it.
Then came the "but," the exception that imperceptibly swallowed the rule. He quoted former Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as saying, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." In other words: "Forget what I just said about how judges should interpret, not make, the law. I want my judges to have empathy. And don't tell anyone, but when I say 'empathy,' that's code for bending the law to achieve the results I want based on the selective empathy I have for certain victimized groups."
Before you fall for the upcoming protests that Sotomayor truly is a practitioner of judicial restraint, you might want to examine her record, including the case of Ricci v. DeStefano.
Frank Ricci is a dyslexic Connecticut firefighter who quit a second job in order to study up to 13 hours a day and paid someone to read his textbooks onto tape in preparation for the New Haven Fire Department's exam for promotion to lieutenant or captain. Though he received the sixth-highest score out of 77 applicants vying for eight vacancies, the city decided to deny him (and all other applicants) his earned promotion because no black applicants passed, even though the exam had been carefully constructed to ensure race neutrality.
Ricci was among 18 candidates -- 17 whites and one Hispanic -- who sued the city of New Haven for racial discrimination. The district judge issued summary judgment against the plaintiffs. On appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Sotomayor was one of three judges on the panel who issued a per curiam opinion (adopting the full reasoning of the district court without elaboration) affirming the district court's ruling.
The plaintiffs failed to achieve an en banc (entire court) rehearing of the appeal, but not without a strongly critical dissenting opinion from one of Sotomayor's fellow Clinton appointees on the court, Judge Jose Cabranes.
Cabranes noted that it was highly unusual for the panel to have issued a per curiam opinion, because the questions raised on appeal were "indisputably complex and far from well-settled." He wrote, "The core issue presented by this case -- the scope of a municipal employer's authority to disregard examination results based solely on the race of the successful applicants -- is not addressed by any precedent of the Supreme Court or our Circuit. … What is not arguable … is … that this Court has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal."
Sotomayor and her like-minded colleagues not only highhandedly denied justice to the aggrieved firefighters in this case but also tried to bury their injustice in their summary affirmation of the district court's ruling, something that obviously troubled Judge Cabranes. This is judicial activism at its most egregious and least transparent, when judges disregard the law to achieve the result they prefer and attempt to conceal their actions.
Again, this is what Barack Obama obviously has in mind when he discusses "empathy." In Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor's empathy was for those who weren't aggrieved -- call it "reverse empathy" -- and she just didn't have any left for the poor saps who worked their tails off to earn their promotions -- just as Obama doesn't have any left for mortgage debtors who honor their obligations.
While defenders of Sotomayor will argue that she didn't engage in judicial reverse discrimination in this case, the facts yell otherwise. But if you're still in doubt that she would base her rulings on her personal feelings, be aware that in a speech at Berkeley in 2002, she said it's perfectly acceptable for judges to consider their "experiences as women and people of color" in making their decisions.
Also readily available (on YouTube) is videotape of her saying -- before remembering her comments were being taped and then feigning to backtrack -- that "the Court of Appeals is where policy is made."
Senate Republicans must take a stand and vocally oppose this nomination, not on the basis of partisan politics, but in defense of the rule of law and the proper role of the judiciary, principles the president is only pretending to honor.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
True to form, President Barack Obama -- in his remarks introducing his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor -- said he was doing one thing while doing the exact opposite. He articulated his criteria for the optimal nominee yet chose someone who falls squarely outside those criteria -- as best we can tell.
But what's all the fuss? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little conservative minds. Obama's mesmerized audiences are not supposed to pay attention to the meaning and context of his words, only to their aesthetic appeal and to the tonal qualities and modulation in his voice.
Obama said a Supreme Court nominee's two most important qualities are her rigorous intellect and mastery of the law and her recognition of the limits of the judicial role -- that a judge's job is to interpret law, not to make it.
Then came the "but," the exception that imperceptibly swallowed the rule. He quoted former Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as saying, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience." In other words: "Forget what I just said about how judges should interpret, not make, the law. I want my judges to have empathy. And don't tell anyone, but when I say 'empathy,' that's code for bending the law to achieve the results I want based on the selective empathy I have for certain victimized groups."
Before you fall for the upcoming protests that Sotomayor truly is a practitioner of judicial restraint, you might want to examine her record, including the case of Ricci v. DeStefano.
Frank Ricci is a dyslexic Connecticut firefighter who quit a second job in order to study up to 13 hours a day and paid someone to read his textbooks onto tape in preparation for the New Haven Fire Department's exam for promotion to lieutenant or captain. Though he received the sixth-highest score out of 77 applicants vying for eight vacancies, the city decided to deny him (and all other applicants) his earned promotion because no black applicants passed, even though the exam had been carefully constructed to ensure race neutrality.
Ricci was among 18 candidates -- 17 whites and one Hispanic -- who sued the city of New Haven for racial discrimination. The district judge issued summary judgment against the plaintiffs. On appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Sotomayor was one of three judges on the panel who issued a per curiam opinion (adopting the full reasoning of the district court without elaboration) affirming the district court's ruling.
The plaintiffs failed to achieve an en banc (entire court) rehearing of the appeal, but not without a strongly critical dissenting opinion from one of Sotomayor's fellow Clinton appointees on the court, Judge Jose Cabranes.
Cabranes noted that it was highly unusual for the panel to have issued a per curiam opinion, because the questions raised on appeal were "indisputably complex and far from well-settled." He wrote, "The core issue presented by this case -- the scope of a municipal employer's authority to disregard examination results based solely on the race of the successful applicants -- is not addressed by any precedent of the Supreme Court or our Circuit. … What is not arguable … is … that this Court has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal."
Sotomayor and her like-minded colleagues not only highhandedly denied justice to the aggrieved firefighters in this case but also tried to bury their injustice in their summary affirmation of the district court's ruling, something that obviously troubled Judge Cabranes. This is judicial activism at its most egregious and least transparent, when judges disregard the law to achieve the result they prefer and attempt to conceal their actions.
Again, this is what Barack Obama obviously has in mind when he discusses "empathy." In Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor's empathy was for those who weren't aggrieved -- call it "reverse empathy" -- and she just didn't have any left for the poor saps who worked their tails off to earn their promotions -- just as Obama doesn't have any left for mortgage debtors who honor their obligations.
While defenders of Sotomayor will argue that she didn't engage in judicial reverse discrimination in this case, the facts yell otherwise. But if you're still in doubt that she would base her rulings on her personal feelings, be aware that in a speech at Berkeley in 2002, she said it's perfectly acceptable for judges to consider their "experiences as women and people of color" in making their decisions.
Also readily available (on YouTube) is videotape of her saying -- before remembering her comments were being taped and then feigning to backtrack -- that "the Court of Appeals is where policy is made."
Senate Republicans must take a stand and vocally oppose this nomination, not on the basis of partisan politics, but in defense of the rule of law and the proper role of the judiciary, principles the president is only pretending to honor.
20 Hypocrisies Of Liberalism
John Hawkins
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Everybody is guilty of being hypocritical sometimes. It’s just part of being human; however, modern liberalism has taken this concept to stunning extremes. The entire liberal belief system, from top to bottom, is a series of logical blind alleys, bottlenecks, and jaw-dropping contradictions.
To be a politically active liberal is to a be a person whose life is steeped in hypocrisy from the time he gets up until the time he goes to bed -- and that's despite the fact that many libs take morally abhorrent positions just so they can't be called hypocrites if they ever get caught doing something degenerate.
That being said, I will freely acknowledge that every liberal isn't guilty of all the hypocrisies that are on this list and that conservatives can be contradictory, too. Now, let's see if that actually prompts some self-reflection on the Left as opposed to cries of "Here's something conservatives are hypocritical about" and "I don't believe this one." (Sure it will. ha! ha! ha!)
Liberals believe that...
1) ...it's impossible to come to any sort of reasonable compromise with conservatives on anything, but that we can fix our problems with nations like Iran and North Korea by just sitting down and talking things out.
2) ...they're the most compassionate people in society. Yet, in study after study, you find that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals.
3) ...they're not racist despite the fact that they consistently support policies that have been several orders of magnitude more devastating to black Americans than the Ku Klux Klan.
4) ...we've all got to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint to save the planet. Yet, liberals like Al Gore live in big mansions and fly around in private jets while still maintaining their credibility with their fellow environmentalist libs.
5) ...they're the people who are really looking out for women, but they strongly support sexual predators like Bill Clinton and they regularly hurl grotesque sexist insults at feminist role models like Sarah Palin who don't toe-the-liberal-line.
6) ...we definitely need to have higher tax rates in this country. Yet many of Obama's nominees and cabinet members, including the Secretary of the Treasury, don't pay their taxes as is -- and liberals are okay with that.
7) ...guns should be banned! Yet, while they want to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans who live in dangerous neighborhoods, they believe liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell should be able to hire armed bodyguards.
8) ...they're the ones who really care about educating children; yet time and time again, they support policies that hurt our kids, but help their political allies in the teachers’ unions.
9) ...running deficits are bad! After all, liberals ceaselessly took credit for the budget being balanced during the Clinton years and attack Bush for his profligate spending, right? Yet, despite the fact that Obama is running an unsustainable deficit so large that it threatens the future of the country, liberals are perfectly fine with it.
10) ...college campuses are supposed to be places of learning and intellectual openness, but they tacitly approve of conservative speakers being attacked and shouted down.
11) ...they're gay-friendly even as they work to out gay Republicans and they often accuse the Republicans they hate the most of secretly being gay.
12) ...they're the ones who are champions of free speech, but liberals want to silence their most effective critics on talk radio via the Fairness Doctrine.
13) ...they're the ones who really want to stick to the Constitution. Yet, liberals buy into a "living Constitution," which is nothing more in practice than substituting your personal opinion for what's actually in the Constitution.
14) ...it was terrible for George Bush to detain terrorists indefinitely, to use extraordinary rendition to send them to other nations, and to withhold more photos of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- but, when Obama did the exact same things, few liberals had anything to say about it.
15) ...we have to move away from sources of energy like oil, coal, and nuclear power towards what they believe are more eco-friendly power sources like wind power. Yet, whenever anyone tries to build a wind turbine, it's almost always a liberal that attempts to stop it -- just as Ted Kennedy did because he was afraid his yachting view might be spoiled if the ideas he championed were put into practice.
16) ...they're courageous for speaking out against Republicans while Hollywood and the media cheer them on, but when the time comes to speak out against the abuses of radical Muslims, they're terrified into silence.
17) ...when someone despises America, we need to ask, "What have we done to make him hate us?" -- but, when someone despises liberals for what they're doing to the country, they conclude that person must be ignorant, bigoted, or evil.
18) ...it's morally abhorrent to put a serial killer to death, but that a mother killing her baby via abortion is merely a "choice."
19) ...we have to count every vote, except for members of the military serving overseas, most of whom are denied their right to vote because Democratic politicians deliberately delay in sending out their ballots until it's too late for them to be returned in time.
20) ...when they looked at information from our intelligence agencies and concluded that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, they were just mistaken -- but when George Bush looked at the same info and drew the same conclusion, he was lying.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Everybody is guilty of being hypocritical sometimes. It’s just part of being human; however, modern liberalism has taken this concept to stunning extremes. The entire liberal belief system, from top to bottom, is a series of logical blind alleys, bottlenecks, and jaw-dropping contradictions.
To be a politically active liberal is to a be a person whose life is steeped in hypocrisy from the time he gets up until the time he goes to bed -- and that's despite the fact that many libs take morally abhorrent positions just so they can't be called hypocrites if they ever get caught doing something degenerate.
That being said, I will freely acknowledge that every liberal isn't guilty of all the hypocrisies that are on this list and that conservatives can be contradictory, too. Now, let's see if that actually prompts some self-reflection on the Left as opposed to cries of "Here's something conservatives are hypocritical about" and "I don't believe this one." (Sure it will. ha! ha! ha!)
Liberals believe that...
1) ...it's impossible to come to any sort of reasonable compromise with conservatives on anything, but that we can fix our problems with nations like Iran and North Korea by just sitting down and talking things out.
2) ...they're the most compassionate people in society. Yet, in study after study, you find that conservatives give more of their money to charity than liberals.
3) ...they're not racist despite the fact that they consistently support policies that have been several orders of magnitude more devastating to black Americans than the Ku Klux Klan.
4) ...we've all got to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint to save the planet. Yet, liberals like Al Gore live in big mansions and fly around in private jets while still maintaining their credibility with their fellow environmentalist libs.
5) ...they're the people who are really looking out for women, but they strongly support sexual predators like Bill Clinton and they regularly hurl grotesque sexist insults at feminist role models like Sarah Palin who don't toe-the-liberal-line.
6) ...we definitely need to have higher tax rates in this country. Yet many of Obama's nominees and cabinet members, including the Secretary of the Treasury, don't pay their taxes as is -- and liberals are okay with that.
7) ...guns should be banned! Yet, while they want to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding Americans who live in dangerous neighborhoods, they believe liberal celebrities like Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell should be able to hire armed bodyguards.
8) ...they're the ones who really care about educating children; yet time and time again, they support policies that hurt our kids, but help their political allies in the teachers’ unions.
9) ...running deficits are bad! After all, liberals ceaselessly took credit for the budget being balanced during the Clinton years and attack Bush for his profligate spending, right? Yet, despite the fact that Obama is running an unsustainable deficit so large that it threatens the future of the country, liberals are perfectly fine with it.
10) ...college campuses are supposed to be places of learning and intellectual openness, but they tacitly approve of conservative speakers being attacked and shouted down.
11) ...they're gay-friendly even as they work to out gay Republicans and they often accuse the Republicans they hate the most of secretly being gay.
12) ...they're the ones who are champions of free speech, but liberals want to silence their most effective critics on talk radio via the Fairness Doctrine.
13) ...they're the ones who really want to stick to the Constitution. Yet, liberals buy into a "living Constitution," which is nothing more in practice than substituting your personal opinion for what's actually in the Constitution.
14) ...it was terrible for George Bush to detain terrorists indefinitely, to use extraordinary rendition to send them to other nations, and to withhold more photos of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- but, when Obama did the exact same things, few liberals had anything to say about it.
15) ...we have to move away from sources of energy like oil, coal, and nuclear power towards what they believe are more eco-friendly power sources like wind power. Yet, whenever anyone tries to build a wind turbine, it's almost always a liberal that attempts to stop it -- just as Ted Kennedy did because he was afraid his yachting view might be spoiled if the ideas he championed were put into practice.
16) ...they're courageous for speaking out against Republicans while Hollywood and the media cheer them on, but when the time comes to speak out against the abuses of radical Muslims, they're terrified into silence.
17) ...when someone despises America, we need to ask, "What have we done to make him hate us?" -- but, when someone despises liberals for what they're doing to the country, they conclude that person must be ignorant, bigoted, or evil.
18) ...it's morally abhorrent to put a serial killer to death, but that a mother killing her baby via abortion is merely a "choice."
19) ...we have to count every vote, except for members of the military serving overseas, most of whom are denied their right to vote because Democratic politicians deliberately delay in sending out their ballots until it's too late for them to be returned in time.
20) ...when they looked at information from our intelligence agencies and concluded that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, they were just mistaken -- but when George Bush looked at the same info and drew the same conclusion, he was lying.
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