The Mideast is no aberration. Just ask the Scots.
By Max Boot
Sunday, January 6, 2008 12:01 a.m.
President Bush will travel to the Middle East this week, where he will become the latest U.S. president, going back to the 1940s, to make a major push to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It is hard to see what in the current situation--with the Gaza Strip in the hands of a rabidly anti-Israel group and the West Bank in the hands of only a mildly less anti-Israel group--makes him think he will succeed where his predecessors failed.
Those who insist on pursuing the "peace process," notwithstanding the low probability of success, claim that we have no choice. "What is the alternative?" they ask. "Perpetual war?"
Well, yes.
To be skeptical of the peace process is not to suggest that such never-ending strife is desirable, but merely to acknowledge that it may be inevitable. The contrary view--that even a conflict as intractable as this one should end soon--rests on a sunny, if ahistorical, Enlightenment faith that peace is the natural order of things and war a temporary aberration.
There is also a uniquely American perspective at work here: We normally fight short wars overseas, with even our longest conflict, Vietnam, lasting less than a decade (1965-73) if measured by the deployment of ground forces. Win or lose, we are used to having the shooting end within a few years. Given this outlook, many Americans believe that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which has been raging in one form or another for 60 years, is overdue for resolution.
But if measured by the length of other tribal and territorial disputes throughout history, there is no reason to think that the Arabs and Jews will soon beat their swords into plowshares. Consider just one such conflict, pitting the Scots against the English. The divide between the two nationalities--with similar religions (first Catholic, then Protestant), ethnic origins, languages and political systems--should have been easily bridged. But the Scots and English spent centuries killing one another.
War broke out in 1296 after King Edward I of England tried to claim the empty throne of Scotland. This sparked a prolonged resistance led first by William Wallace and then, after his execution, by Robert Bruce. Both the Scots and the English resorted to terrorist tactics, with frequent burning, looting and killing on both sides.
This savagery was evident early on: In 1297 William Heselrig, the English sheriff of the small town of Lanark, burned down a house belonging to Wallace's wife or girlfriend, Marion Braidfute, killing her and everyone else inside. Wallace's riposte is recorded in a medieval chronicle: "Gathering together a band of desperate men, he fell by night on the sheriff and his armed guard, hewed the sheriff into small pieces with his own sword and burned the buildings and those within them."
Some scholars have cast doubt on elements of this traditional tale (which was dramatized in Mel Gibson's 1995 film, "Braveheart"), but there is no doubting the ferocity or frequency of such small-scale clashes. There were also some major battles--the Scots prevailed at Stirling Bridge (1297) and Bannockburn (1314), the English at Falkirk (1298), Halidon Hill (1333) and numerous later battlefields--but none proved decisive. Scotland was too small and poor to defeat England. And English monarchs lacked the resources or the will to pacify the prickly Scots. So the war ground on, century after century, interrupted occasionally by truces and treaties.
The accession of a Scottish monarch to the throne of England in 1603 as King James I might have been expected to end the strife. Yet the two realms clashed again during the English Civil War in the 1640s. The conflict did not truly end until 1745, when a revolt by mainly Scottish supporters of the Stuarts (descendants of James I), was put down--449 years after the start of Anglo-Scottish hostilities.
It is instructive to contemplate the virulence and length of the English struggles with the Scots (and also the similar, more recent battles with the Irish), given that their cultural and religious differences are trivial compared to those separating Israelis and Arabs. Attempts to end such conflicts before both sides are thoroughly exhausted are likely to have no more success than the Treaty of Northampton, which was supposed to end the Anglo-Scottish dispute in 1328. The only exception is if outside powers commit massive military force to bring peace, as happened in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. But that's unlikely to happen in the Holy Land.
While there is plenty of evidence that most Israelis are tired of today's war, there is little sign that their enemies are likely to give up anytime soon. Jihadists speak of their struggle to eliminate the "Zionist entity" as the work of centuries. Even if many ordinary Palestinians privately long for peace, their preferences are unlikely to prevail over those of the gunmen. Hard as it may be to accept, we have to confront the possibility that the Arab-Israeli conflict may not have a "solution," at least not in the foreseeable future, and that trying to create one represents a triumph of hope over experience.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Friday, January 4, 2008
Making Cents of Our Economy
By Rich Tucker
Friday, January 4, 2008
It’s impossible to open a newspaper without being told how awful the American economy is. Yet it’s just as hard to open your eyes without seeing how outstanding the American economy is.
Consider an AP report from Dec. 4. “Hiring practically stalled in December, driving the nation’s unemployment rate up to a two-year high of 5 percent and fanning fears of a recession,” it begins.
Yawn.
At this point it’s probably impossible to count how many warnings of recession we’ve endured. Today the threat is rising unemployment. Last month it was the collapse of subprime mortgages. And in the years before that it was soaring gas prices, Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 attacks. Through it all, month after month and year after year, the economy just keeps growing.
So let’s ignore the news for a moment and consider whether we’re better off than we were just, say, a generation ago.
A recent trip to Florida reminded my wife that, 20 years ago, her parents surprised their three children with a Christmastime trip to Disney World. Back in 1987, that was the ultimate extravagance for a middle-class family, a once-in-a-lifetime voyage. These days, if my stack of Christmas cards is to be believed, plenty of middle-class Americans make a pilgrimage to Orlando every year.
Statistics bear that out. Attendance at theme parks increases every year. Even last month, amid the much-heralded jump in unemployment, “Theme park parking lots swelled past capacity, and pedestrian concourses at Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Orlando resembled Manhattan sidewalks during rush hour,” the Orlando Sentinel reported on Jan. 2. The story’s headline says it all: “No sign of tough economic times at Orlando-area theme parks.”
And it’s not simply humans who’re living better than ever. So are our pets. Last year the Progressive auto insurance company announced that, “In most states, a Progressive policy with Collision coverage will now cover its customers’ canine and feline four-legged family members.” Insurance for Fido is only part of a trend, though.
In July 2007, BusinessWeek magazine reported, “Americans now spend $41 billion a year on their pets -- more than the gross domestic product of all but 64 countries in the world.” Keep that in mind the next time you say, “It’s a dog’s life.” Animals in this country have more disposable income than humans in most other countries.
Furthermore, spending on pets has doubled in the last 10 years. Of course, as Walter Cronkite noted in his memoirs a few years back, in a troubled economy the family pet is the first thing to go. “My mother denied it to her last breath,” Cronkite wrote about the early days of the depression, “but I am positive that I remember her making hamburgers out of the dog’s last can of food.” If Americans were being forced to eat dog food to survive they wouldn’t want to share it with an animal. Instead we’re pampering our pets more than ever.
Of course, there are problems. Consider health insurance. Apparently, it’s just too good.
“My insurance company requires no co-payments for generic drugs, so I can theoretically mask [high blood pressure] for free,” Washington Post reporter Michael Rosenwald explained in a story last November. “And it just became cheaper for millions of Americans to get low-cost generics through Wal-Mart, which is charging $4 for a 30-day supply of drugs that treat common ailments such as high blood pressure.” Access to inexpensive drugs is undoubtedly a problem most countries would love to have.
Rosenwald admits he’s overweight, as are millions of Americans. But that, again, is a sign of a good economy, not a bad one. On the whole, we work less strenuous jobs, yet have more money than previous generations. Good work, if you can get it.
Yes, there are problems in the American economy. Too many people lack health insurance, for example. But the answer is to expand the free market by getting them enrolled in private health-insurance plans. How to do that is another column for another day. However, suffice to say the problem will abate when more people control their own health care and can act in their own best interests.
At some point our economy may, indeed, slide into recession. But if past is prologue, we’ll just go on enjoying the most amazing boom in human history. You won’t be reading much about that boom in the papers. But look around, and you’ll see evidence of it everywhere.
Friday, January 4, 2008
It’s impossible to open a newspaper without being told how awful the American economy is. Yet it’s just as hard to open your eyes without seeing how outstanding the American economy is.
Consider an AP report from Dec. 4. “Hiring practically stalled in December, driving the nation’s unemployment rate up to a two-year high of 5 percent and fanning fears of a recession,” it begins.
Yawn.
At this point it’s probably impossible to count how many warnings of recession we’ve endured. Today the threat is rising unemployment. Last month it was the collapse of subprime mortgages. And in the years before that it was soaring gas prices, Hurricane Katrina and the Sept. 11 attacks. Through it all, month after month and year after year, the economy just keeps growing.
So let’s ignore the news for a moment and consider whether we’re better off than we were just, say, a generation ago.
A recent trip to Florida reminded my wife that, 20 years ago, her parents surprised their three children with a Christmastime trip to Disney World. Back in 1987, that was the ultimate extravagance for a middle-class family, a once-in-a-lifetime voyage. These days, if my stack of Christmas cards is to be believed, plenty of middle-class Americans make a pilgrimage to Orlando every year.
Statistics bear that out. Attendance at theme parks increases every year. Even last month, amid the much-heralded jump in unemployment, “Theme park parking lots swelled past capacity, and pedestrian concourses at Walt Disney World, SeaWorld Orlando and Universal Orlando resembled Manhattan sidewalks during rush hour,” the Orlando Sentinel reported on Jan. 2. The story’s headline says it all: “No sign of tough economic times at Orlando-area theme parks.”
And it’s not simply humans who’re living better than ever. So are our pets. Last year the Progressive auto insurance company announced that, “In most states, a Progressive policy with Collision coverage will now cover its customers’ canine and feline four-legged family members.” Insurance for Fido is only part of a trend, though.
In July 2007, BusinessWeek magazine reported, “Americans now spend $41 billion a year on their pets -- more than the gross domestic product of all but 64 countries in the world.” Keep that in mind the next time you say, “It’s a dog’s life.” Animals in this country have more disposable income than humans in most other countries.
Furthermore, spending on pets has doubled in the last 10 years. Of course, as Walter Cronkite noted in his memoirs a few years back, in a troubled economy the family pet is the first thing to go. “My mother denied it to her last breath,” Cronkite wrote about the early days of the depression, “but I am positive that I remember her making hamburgers out of the dog’s last can of food.” If Americans were being forced to eat dog food to survive they wouldn’t want to share it with an animal. Instead we’re pampering our pets more than ever.
Of course, there are problems. Consider health insurance. Apparently, it’s just too good.
“My insurance company requires no co-payments for generic drugs, so I can theoretically mask [high blood pressure] for free,” Washington Post reporter Michael Rosenwald explained in a story last November. “And it just became cheaper for millions of Americans to get low-cost generics through Wal-Mart, which is charging $4 for a 30-day supply of drugs that treat common ailments such as high blood pressure.” Access to inexpensive drugs is undoubtedly a problem most countries would love to have.
Rosenwald admits he’s overweight, as are millions of Americans. But that, again, is a sign of a good economy, not a bad one. On the whole, we work less strenuous jobs, yet have more money than previous generations. Good work, if you can get it.
Yes, there are problems in the American economy. Too many people lack health insurance, for example. But the answer is to expand the free market by getting them enrolled in private health-insurance plans. How to do that is another column for another day. However, suffice to say the problem will abate when more people control their own health care and can act in their own best interests.
At some point our economy may, indeed, slide into recession. But if past is prologue, we’ll just go on enjoying the most amazing boom in human history. You won’t be reading much about that boom in the papers. But look around, and you’ll see evidence of it everywhere.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Whitewash
The racist history the Democratic Party wants you to forget.
By Bruce Bartlett
Monday, December 24, 2007 12:01 a.m.
In his new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. In the course of this speech, Reagan said he supported "states' rights." Mr. Krugman says this was code declaring his secret sympathy for Southern racism.
Others, including Mr. Krugman's Times colleague David Brooks and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, have come to Reagan's defense, denying that he was a racist or had any racist intent in his 1980 speech. That's fine but unlikely to change the minds of those like Mr. Krugman who are determined to smear the Republican Party with the charge of racism, and who are adept at finding racist code words like "law and order" by Republicans that are completely convincing to liberals and Democrats in support of this accusation, even though they are invisible to those with no political ax to grind.
However, if a single mention of states' rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn't bother with code words? They were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and "Jim Crow" laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.
Following are some quotes from prominent Democrats largely drawn from my new book, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past." Even with the exclusion of all quotes that contain the N-word, it is clear that many of the Democratic Party's most important historical figures have long made statements that reduce Reagan's alleged transgression to a drop in the ocean. If we are going to hold him and his party accountable for a single mention of states' rights, then the party of those listed below is far more culpable in promoting and defending racism.
Blacks "are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both of body and mind."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Co-founder of the Democratic Party (along with Andrew Jackson)
President, 1801-09
"I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good--a positive good."
--Sen. John C. Calhoun (D., S.C.), 1837
Vice President, 1825-32
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.
If blacks were given the right to vote, that would "place every splay-footed, bandy-shanked, hump-backed, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, woolly-headed, ebon-colored Negro in the country upon an equality with the poor white man."
--Rep. Andrew Johnson, (D., Tenn.), 1844
President, 1865-69
"Resolved, That the Democratic Party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1852
Blacks are "a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race."
--Chief Justice Roger Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1856
Appointed Attorney General by Andrew Jackson in 1831
Appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Andrew Jackson in 1833
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson in 1836
"Resolved, That claiming fellowship with, and desiring the co-operation of all who regard the preservation of the Union under the Constitution as the paramount issue--and repudiating all sectional parties and platforms concerning domestic slavery, which seek to embroil the States and incite to treason and armed resistance to law in the Territories; and whose avowed purposes, if consummated, must end in civil war and disunion, the American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the 'slavery question' upon which the great national idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the Union--NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE AND TERRITORY, OR IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA" (emphasis in original).
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1856
"I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others."
--Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (D., Ill.), 1858
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1860
"Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1860
"The Almighty has fixed the distinction of the races; the Almighty has made the black man inferior, and, sir, by no legislation, by no military power, can you wipe out this distinction."
--Rep. Fernando Wood (D., N.Y.), 1865
Mayor of New York City, 1855-58, 1860-62
"My fellow citizens, I have said that the contest before us was one for the restoration of our government; it is also one for the restoration of our race. It is to prevent the people of our race from being exiled from their homes--exiled from the government which they formed and created for themselves and for their children, and to prevent them from being driven out of the country or trodden under foot by an inferior and barbarous race."
--Francis P. Blair Jr., accepting the Democratic nomination for Vice President, 1868
Democratic Senator from Missouri, 1869-72
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.
"Instead of restoring the Union, it [the Republican Party] has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten states, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and Negro supremacy."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1868
"While the tendency of the white race is upward, the tendency of the colored race is downward."
--Sen. Thomas Hendricks (D., Ind.), 1869
Democratic nominee for Vice President, 1876
Vice President, 1885
"We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States . . . demand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1876
"No more Chinese immigration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and that even carefully guarded."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1880
"American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores our gates be closed."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1884
"We favor the continuance and strict enforcement of the Chinese exclusion law, and its application to the same classes of all Asiatic races."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1900
"The repeal of the fifteenth amendment, one of the greatest blunders and therefore one of the greatest crimes in political history, is a consummation to be devoutly wished for."
--Rep. John Sharpe Williams (D., Miss.), 1903
House Minority Leader, 1903-08
"Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we Southerners are all Democrats."
--Sen. Ben Tillman (D., S.C.), 1906
Chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs, 1913-19
"We are opposed to the admission of Asiatic immigrants who can not be amalgamated with our population, or whose presence among us would raise a race issue and involve us in diplomatic controversies with Oriental powers."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1908
"I am opposed to the practice of having colored policemen in the District [of Columbia]. It is a source of danger by constantly engendering racial friction, and is offensive to thousands of Southern white people who make their homes here."
--Sen. Hoke Smith (D., Ga.), 1912
Appointed Secretary of the Interior by Grover Cleveland in 1893
"The South is serious with regard to its attitude to the Negro in politics. The South understands this subject, and its policy is unalterable and uncompromising. We desire no concessions. We seek no sops. We grasp no shadows on this subject. We take no risks. We abhor a Northern policy of catering to the Negro in politics just as we abhor a Northern policy of social equality."
--Josephus Daniels, editor, Raleigh News & Observer, 1912
Appointed Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1913
Appointed Ambassador to Mexico by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933
USS Josephus Daniels named for him by the Johnson Administration in 1965
"The Negro as a race, in all the ages of the world, has never shown sustained power of self-development. He is not endowed with the creative faculty. . . . He has never created for himself any civilization. . . . He has never had any civilization except that which has been inculcated by a superior race. And it is a lamentable fact that his civilization lasts only so long as he is in the hands of the white man who inculcates it. When left to himself he has universally gone back to the barbarism of the jungle."
--Sen. James Vardaman (D., Miss.), 1914
Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources, 1913-19
"This is a white man's country, and will always remain a white man's country."
--Rep. James F. Byrnes (D., S.C.), 1919
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941
Appointed Secretary of State by Harry S. Truman in 1945
"Slavery among the whites was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made, when--and only when--brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in support of white supremacy--it ought to be sufficient to convince even the blacks themselves."
--William Jennings Bryan, 1923
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1896, 1900 and 1908
Appointed Secretary of State by Woodrow Wilson in 1913
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.
"Anyone who has traveled to the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. . . . The argument works both ways. I know a great many cultivated, highly educated and delightful Japanese. They have all told me that they would feel the same repugnance and objection to have thousands of Americans settle in Japan and intermarry with the Japanese as I would feel in having large numbers of Japanese coming over here and intermarry with the American population. In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States it is necessary only to advance the true reason--the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. . . . The Japanese people and the American people are both opposed to intermarriage of the two races--there can be no quarrel there."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1925
President, 1933-45
"This passport which you have given me is a symbol to me of the passport which you have given me before. I do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the 'Junior Senator from Alabama.' "
--Hugo Black, accepting a life membership in the Ku Klux Klan upon his election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Alabama, 1926
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937
"Mr. President, the crime of lynching . . . is not of sufficient importance to justify this legislation."
--Sen. Claude Pepper (D., Fla.), 1938
Spoken while engaged in a six-hour speech against the antilynching bill
"I am a former Kleagle [recruiter] of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County. . . . The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union."
--Robert C. Byrd, 1946
Democratic Senator from West Virginia, 1959-present
Senate Majority Leader, 1977-80 and 1987-88
Senate President Pro Tempore, 1989-95, 2001-03, 2007-present
His portrait stands in the U.S. Capitol.
President Truman's civil rights program "is a farce and a sham--an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I have voted against the so-called poll tax repeal bill. . .. I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill."
--Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1948
U.S. Senator, 1949-61
Senate Majority Leader, 1955-61
President, 1963-69
"There is no warrant for the curious notion that Christianity favors the involuntary commingling of the races in social institutions. Although He knew both Jews and Samaritans and the relations existing between them, Christ did not advocate that courts or legislative bodies should compel them to mix socially against their will."
--Sen. Sam Ervin (D., N.C.), 1955
Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, 1971-75
"The decline and fall of the Roman empire came after years of intermarriage with other races. Spain was toppled as a world power as a result of the amalgamation of the races. . . . Certainly history shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent."
--Herman E. Talmadge, 1955
Democratic Senator from Georgia, 1957-81
Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, 1971-81
"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
--Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957
"I have never seen very many white people who felt they were being imposed upon or being subjected to any second-class citizenship if they were directed to a waiting room or to any other public facility to wait or to eat with other white people. Only the Negroes, of all the races which are in this land, publicly proclaim they are being mistreated, imposed upon, and declared second-class citizens because they must go to public facilities with members of their own race."
--Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. (D., Ga.), 1961
The Russell Senate Office Building is named for him.
"I did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes."
--Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961
Kennedy later authorized wiretapping the phones and bugging the hotel rooms of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I'm not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. . . . I have nothing against a community that's made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods."
--Jimmy Carter, 1976
President, 1977-81
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 2002
"The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years. . . . There were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans."
--James Webb, 1990
Now a Democratic Senator from Virginia
"Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva."
--Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D., S.C.) 1993
Chairman, Commerce Committee, 1987-95 and 2001-03
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 1984
"I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation."
--Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), 2004
Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008
"You cannot go into a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent."
"My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything [but] a Northeastern liberal state."
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African American [Barack Obama] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."
"There's less than 1% of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4% or 5% that is, are minorities. What is it in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with."
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., (D., Del.), 2006-07
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, 1987-95
Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008
Bonus quote:
"It has of late become the custom of the men of the South to speak with entire candor of the settled and deliberate policy of suppressing the negro vote. They have been forced to choose between a policy of manifest injustice toward the blacks and the horrors of negro rule. They chose to disfranchise the negroes. That was manifestly the lesser of two evils. . . . The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks. . . . So long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the menace of the rule of the blacks will impend, and the safeguards against it must be maintained."
--Editorial, "The Political Future of the South," New York Times, May 10, 1900)
By Bruce Bartlett
Monday, December 24, 2007 12:01 a.m.
In his new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. In the course of this speech, Reagan said he supported "states' rights." Mr. Krugman says this was code declaring his secret sympathy for Southern racism.
Others, including Mr. Krugman's Times colleague David Brooks and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, have come to Reagan's defense, denying that he was a racist or had any racist intent in his 1980 speech. That's fine but unlikely to change the minds of those like Mr. Krugman who are determined to smear the Republican Party with the charge of racism, and who are adept at finding racist code words like "law and order" by Republicans that are completely convincing to liberals and Democrats in support of this accusation, even though they are invisible to those with no political ax to grind.
However, if a single mention of states' rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn't bother with code words? They were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and "Jim Crow" laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.
Following are some quotes from prominent Democrats largely drawn from my new book, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past." Even with the exclusion of all quotes that contain the N-word, it is clear that many of the Democratic Party's most important historical figures have long made statements that reduce Reagan's alleged transgression to a drop in the ocean. If we are going to hold him and his party accountable for a single mention of states' rights, then the party of those listed below is far more culpable in promoting and defending racism.
Blacks "are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both of body and mind."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Co-founder of the Democratic Party (along with Andrew Jackson)
President, 1801-09
"I hold that the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good--a positive good."
--Sen. John C. Calhoun (D., S.C.), 1837
Vice President, 1825-32
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.
If blacks were given the right to vote, that would "place every splay-footed, bandy-shanked, hump-backed, thick-lipped, flat-nosed, woolly-headed, ebon-colored Negro in the country upon an equality with the poor white man."
--Rep. Andrew Johnson, (D., Tenn.), 1844
President, 1865-69
"Resolved, That the Democratic Party will resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question, under whatever shape or color the attempt may be made."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1852
Blacks are "a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race."
--Chief Justice Roger Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1856
Appointed Attorney General by Andrew Jackson in 1831
Appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Andrew Jackson in 1833
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson in 1836
"Resolved, That claiming fellowship with, and desiring the co-operation of all who regard the preservation of the Union under the Constitution as the paramount issue--and repudiating all sectional parties and platforms concerning domestic slavery, which seek to embroil the States and incite to treason and armed resistance to law in the Territories; and whose avowed purposes, if consummated, must end in civil war and disunion, the American Democracy recognize and adopt the principles contained in the organic laws establishing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the 'slavery question' upon which the great national idea of the people of this whole country can repose in its determined conservatism of the Union--NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE AND TERRITORY, OR IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA" (emphasis in original).
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1856
"I hold that a Negro is not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States. I hold that this government was made on the white basis; made by the white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men and none others."
--Sen. Stephen A. Douglas (D., Ill.), 1858
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1860
"Resolved, That the enactments of the State Legislatures to defeat the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in their effect."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1860
"The Almighty has fixed the distinction of the races; the Almighty has made the black man inferior, and, sir, by no legislation, by no military power, can you wipe out this distinction."
--Rep. Fernando Wood (D., N.Y.), 1865
Mayor of New York City, 1855-58, 1860-62
"My fellow citizens, I have said that the contest before us was one for the restoration of our government; it is also one for the restoration of our race. It is to prevent the people of our race from being exiled from their homes--exiled from the government which they formed and created for themselves and for their children, and to prevent them from being driven out of the country or trodden under foot by an inferior and barbarous race."
--Francis P. Blair Jr., accepting the Democratic nomination for Vice President, 1868
Democratic Senator from Missouri, 1869-72
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.
"Instead of restoring the Union, it [the Republican Party] has, so far as in its power, dissolved it, and subjected ten states, in time of profound peace, to military despotism and Negro supremacy."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1868
"While the tendency of the white race is upward, the tendency of the colored race is downward."
--Sen. Thomas Hendricks (D., Ind.), 1869
Democratic nominee for Vice President, 1876
Vice President, 1885
"We, the delegates of the Democratic party of the United States . . . demand such modification of the treaty with the Chinese Empire, or such legislation within constitutional limitations, as shall prevent further importation or immigration of the Mongolian race."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1876
"No more Chinese immigration, except for travel, education, and foreign commerce, and that even carefully guarded."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1880
"American civilization demands that against the immigration or importation of Mongolians to these shores our gates be closed."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1884
"We favor the continuance and strict enforcement of the Chinese exclusion law, and its application to the same classes of all Asiatic races."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1900
"The repeal of the fifteenth amendment, one of the greatest blunders and therefore one of the greatest crimes in political history, is a consummation to be devoutly wished for."
--Rep. John Sharpe Williams (D., Miss.), 1903
House Minority Leader, 1903-08
"Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is supreme. That is why we Southerners are all Democrats."
--Sen. Ben Tillman (D., S.C.), 1906
Chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs, 1913-19
"We are opposed to the admission of Asiatic immigrants who can not be amalgamated with our population, or whose presence among us would raise a race issue and involve us in diplomatic controversies with Oriental powers."
--Platform of the Democratic Party, 1908
"I am opposed to the practice of having colored policemen in the District [of Columbia]. It is a source of danger by constantly engendering racial friction, and is offensive to thousands of Southern white people who make their homes here."
--Sen. Hoke Smith (D., Ga.), 1912
Appointed Secretary of the Interior by Grover Cleveland in 1893
"The South is serious with regard to its attitude to the Negro in politics. The South understands this subject, and its policy is unalterable and uncompromising. We desire no concessions. We seek no sops. We grasp no shadows on this subject. We take no risks. We abhor a Northern policy of catering to the Negro in politics just as we abhor a Northern policy of social equality."
--Josephus Daniels, editor, Raleigh News & Observer, 1912
Appointed Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1913
Appointed Ambassador to Mexico by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933
USS Josephus Daniels named for him by the Johnson Administration in 1965
"The Negro as a race, in all the ages of the world, has never shown sustained power of self-development. He is not endowed with the creative faculty. . . . He has never created for himself any civilization. . . . He has never had any civilization except that which has been inculcated by a superior race. And it is a lamentable fact that his civilization lasts only so long as he is in the hands of the white man who inculcates it. When left to himself he has universally gone back to the barbarism of the jungle."
--Sen. James Vardaman (D., Miss.), 1914
Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources, 1913-19
"This is a white man's country, and will always remain a white man's country."
--Rep. James F. Byrnes (D., S.C.), 1919
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941
Appointed Secretary of State by Harry S. Truman in 1945
"Slavery among the whites was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made, when--and only when--brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in support of white supremacy--it ought to be sufficient to convince even the blacks themselves."
--William Jennings Bryan, 1923
Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, 1896, 1900 and 1908
Appointed Secretary of State by Woodrow Wilson in 1913
His statue stands in the U.S. Capitol.
"Anyone who has traveled to the Far East knows that the mingling of Asiatic blood with European or American blood produces, in nine cases out of ten, the most unfortunate results. . . . The argument works both ways. I know a great many cultivated, highly educated and delightful Japanese. They have all told me that they would feel the same repugnance and objection to have thousands of Americans settle in Japan and intermarry with the Japanese as I would feel in having large numbers of Japanese coming over here and intermarry with the American population. In this question, then, of Japanese exclusion from the United States it is necessary only to advance the true reason--the undesirability of mixing the blood of the two peoples. . . . The Japanese people and the American people are both opposed to intermarriage of the two races--there can be no quarrel there."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1925
President, 1933-45
"This passport which you have given me is a symbol to me of the passport which you have given me before. I do not feel that it would be out of place to state to you here on this occasion that I know that without the support of the members of this organization I would not have been called, even by my enemies, the 'Junior Senator from Alabama.' "
--Hugo Black, accepting a life membership in the Ku Klux Klan upon his election to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Alabama, 1926
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937
"Mr. President, the crime of lynching . . . is not of sufficient importance to justify this legislation."
--Sen. Claude Pepper (D., Fla.), 1938
Spoken while engaged in a six-hour speech against the antilynching bill
"I am a former Kleagle [recruiter] of the Ku Klux Klan in Raleigh County. . . . The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia. It is necessary that the order be promoted immediately and in every state in the union."
--Robert C. Byrd, 1946
Democratic Senator from West Virginia, 1959-present
Senate Majority Leader, 1977-80 and 1987-88
Senate President Pro Tempore, 1989-95, 2001-03, 2007-present
His portrait stands in the U.S. Capitol.
President Truman's civil rights program "is a farce and a sham--an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I have voted against the so-called poll tax repeal bill. . .. I have voted against the so-called anti-lynching bill."
--Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1948
U.S. Senator, 1949-61
Senate Majority Leader, 1955-61
President, 1963-69
"There is no warrant for the curious notion that Christianity favors the involuntary commingling of the races in social institutions. Although He knew both Jews and Samaritans and the relations existing between them, Christ did not advocate that courts or legislative bodies should compel them to mix socially against their will."
--Sen. Sam Ervin (D., N.C.), 1955
Chairman, Committee on Government Operations, 1971-75
"The decline and fall of the Roman empire came after years of intermarriage with other races. Spain was toppled as a world power as a result of the amalgamation of the races. . . . Certainly history shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent."
--Herman E. Talmadge, 1955
Democratic Senator from Georgia, 1957-81
Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, 1971-81
"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."
--Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D., Texas), 1957
"I have never seen very many white people who felt they were being imposed upon or being subjected to any second-class citizenship if they were directed to a waiting room or to any other public facility to wait or to eat with other white people. Only the Negroes, of all the races which are in this land, publicly proclaim they are being mistreated, imposed upon, and declared second-class citizens because they must go to public facilities with members of their own race."
--Sen. Richard B. Russell Jr. (D., Ga.), 1961
The Russell Senate Office Building is named for him.
"I did not lie awake at night worrying about the problems of Negroes."
--Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, 1961
Kennedy later authorized wiretapping the phones and bugging the hotel rooms of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"I'm not going to use the federal government's authority deliberately to circumvent the natural inclination of people to live in ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods. . . . I have nothing against a community that's made up of people who are Polish or Czechoslovakian or French-Canadian or blacks who are trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods."
--Jimmy Carter, 1976
President, 1977-81
Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, 2002
"The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years. . . . There were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans."
--James Webb, 1990
Now a Democratic Senator from Virginia
"Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva."
--Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D., S.C.) 1993
Chairman, Commerce Committee, 1987-95 and 2001-03
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 1984
"I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia [Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan recruiter] that he would have been a great senator at any moment. . . . He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation."
--Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), 2004
Chairman, Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008
"You cannot go into a Dunkin' Donuts or a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent."
"My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth largest black population in the country. My state is anything [but] a Northeastern liberal state."
"I mean, you got the first mainstream African American [Barack Obama] who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy."
"There's less than 1% of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4% or 5% that is, are minorities. What is it in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with."
Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., (D., Del.), 2006-07
Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, 1987-95
Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations
Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2008
Bonus quote:
"It has of late become the custom of the men of the South to speak with entire candor of the settled and deliberate policy of suppressing the negro vote. They have been forced to choose between a policy of manifest injustice toward the blacks and the horrors of negro rule. They chose to disfranchise the negroes. That was manifestly the lesser of two evils. . . . The Republican Party committed a great public crime when it gave the right of suffrage to the blacks. . . . So long as the Fifteenth Amendment stands, the menace of the rule of the blacks will impend, and the safeguards against it must be maintained."
--Editorial, "The Political Future of the South," New York Times, May 10, 1900)
America Is the Sweetest Gift of All
By Donald Lambro
Monday, December 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Christmas, the season of good will, charity and hope, is a time when America, at least for a while, seems more united as a nation and as a people.
Goodness knows there are many things that divide us throughout the year, but perhaps this is an appropriate time to focus on what holds us together, what we have to be grateful for, and what is right and good in our country and much of the world, too.
The world of course is still a dangerous place, even more dangerous after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But in a spirit of unity that we had not seen perhaps since World War II, we recovered and took a number of sensible steps to guard against another attack.
We have kept our country safer for the past half dozen years -- despite the fear-mongers who maintain that another attack will happen again sooner or later, regardless of our precautions. I do not think that is foreordained as long as we remain vigilant and keep the protections in place that have, if truth be told, foiled many plots against us. We must never let down our guard.
Americans are deeply pessimistic right now about the country's direction, and especially about the economy. But I continue to believe that much of this negative feeling has a lot to do with the news media's slanted reporting on just about everything, focusing on the bad news and ignoring the good.
More Americans are working than at any time in our history. Despite the housing decline and credit crunch, more people own their own home than ever before and most homeowners are paying their mortgages on time.
As for the subprime debacle, it took us a while, but we seem to be fixing the excesses that led to it. The Federal Reserve Board has approved new rules aimed at preventing deceptive lending practices and disqualifying buyers who lie about their incomes in order to obtain an unaffordable mortgage.
This has been a year of turmoil in the financial markets but it was also a year when the stock market soared to record heights, and then, typically, fell back a bit to take only modest gains, allowing the economy catch up and move on to the next plateau. With half the country invested in stocks, more than any nation on earth, a majority of Americans now own a chunk of corporate America.
Americans continue to believe that we don't make much anymore, that everything we buy comes from abroad. But the truth is that U.S. factories produce more and sell more abroad than at any time in our history. This year, American exports will exceed $1.4 trillion, up from about $1 trillion the year before.
We hear a lot about outsourcing, but little or nothing about insourcing. U.S. automakers are having their troubles, but Japanese companies like Honda and Toyota have been building factories here as fast as they can, employing American autoworkers. Both countries benefit from this.
We spend a lot of time bemoaning how polarized our country is and how downright nasty political campaigns have become. But when you think of it, much of this is just the healthy, sometimes excessive, exercise in democracy that is necessary to the nature of the American experiment. We fight hard over political issues in our campaigns, as we always have, but eventually the votes are counted and we move on to the business of government and the life of our nation.
For most of this year, Democrats and Republicans bitterly fought over an energy bill to boost fuel-efficiency standards and help make the U.S. a little more self-sustainable. They also battled over the 2008 budget that became a test of wills over unrestricted funding for the Iraq war.
But last week both houses of Congress agreed on an energy bill by an overwhelming margin, and President Bush signed it. The budget bill passed both chambers too, with the Senate giving Bush the war money he asked for, without the withdrawal deadline anti-war politicians had demanded.
Things are looking up elsewhere in the world as well. It is clear that Bush's counterinsurgency in Iraq has substantially lessened the violence there and to a large degree has stabilized a democracy still in its infancy. Iraqi soldiers are slowly taking over more of their country's defenses and thousands of Iraqi citizens are slowly returning to their homeland.
Our relations with Great Britain, Germany and France have never been better. A new attempt to forge a viable peace plan between Israel and the Palestinian government shows renewed hope of succeeding. North and South Korea have begun tentative steps for useful exchanges between the two estranged nations.
So there is much to be hopeful about and grateful for in this season of "great joy and good tidings" as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Monday, December 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Christmas, the season of good will, charity and hope, is a time when America, at least for a while, seems more united as a nation and as a people.
Goodness knows there are many things that divide us throughout the year, but perhaps this is an appropriate time to focus on what holds us together, what we have to be grateful for, and what is right and good in our country and much of the world, too.
The world of course is still a dangerous place, even more dangerous after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. But in a spirit of unity that we had not seen perhaps since World War II, we recovered and took a number of sensible steps to guard against another attack.
We have kept our country safer for the past half dozen years -- despite the fear-mongers who maintain that another attack will happen again sooner or later, regardless of our precautions. I do not think that is foreordained as long as we remain vigilant and keep the protections in place that have, if truth be told, foiled many plots against us. We must never let down our guard.
Americans are deeply pessimistic right now about the country's direction, and especially about the economy. But I continue to believe that much of this negative feeling has a lot to do with the news media's slanted reporting on just about everything, focusing on the bad news and ignoring the good.
More Americans are working than at any time in our history. Despite the housing decline and credit crunch, more people own their own home than ever before and most homeowners are paying their mortgages on time.
As for the subprime debacle, it took us a while, but we seem to be fixing the excesses that led to it. The Federal Reserve Board has approved new rules aimed at preventing deceptive lending practices and disqualifying buyers who lie about their incomes in order to obtain an unaffordable mortgage.
This has been a year of turmoil in the financial markets but it was also a year when the stock market soared to record heights, and then, typically, fell back a bit to take only modest gains, allowing the economy catch up and move on to the next plateau. With half the country invested in stocks, more than any nation on earth, a majority of Americans now own a chunk of corporate America.
Americans continue to believe that we don't make much anymore, that everything we buy comes from abroad. But the truth is that U.S. factories produce more and sell more abroad than at any time in our history. This year, American exports will exceed $1.4 trillion, up from about $1 trillion the year before.
We hear a lot about outsourcing, but little or nothing about insourcing. U.S. automakers are having their troubles, but Japanese companies like Honda and Toyota have been building factories here as fast as they can, employing American autoworkers. Both countries benefit from this.
We spend a lot of time bemoaning how polarized our country is and how downright nasty political campaigns have become. But when you think of it, much of this is just the healthy, sometimes excessive, exercise in democracy that is necessary to the nature of the American experiment. We fight hard over political issues in our campaigns, as we always have, but eventually the votes are counted and we move on to the business of government and the life of our nation.
For most of this year, Democrats and Republicans bitterly fought over an energy bill to boost fuel-efficiency standards and help make the U.S. a little more self-sustainable. They also battled over the 2008 budget that became a test of wills over unrestricted funding for the Iraq war.
But last week both houses of Congress agreed on an energy bill by an overwhelming margin, and President Bush signed it. The budget bill passed both chambers too, with the Senate giving Bush the war money he asked for, without the withdrawal deadline anti-war politicians had demanded.
Things are looking up elsewhere in the world as well. It is clear that Bush's counterinsurgency in Iraq has substantially lessened the violence there and to a large degree has stabilized a democracy still in its infancy. Iraqi soldiers are slowly taking over more of their country's defenses and thousands of Iraqi citizens are slowly returning to their homeland.
Our relations with Great Britain, Germany and France have never been better. A new attempt to forge a viable peace plan between Israel and the Palestinian government shows renewed hope of succeeding. North and South Korea have begun tentative steps for useful exchanges between the two estranged nations.
So there is much to be hopeful about and grateful for in this season of "great joy and good tidings" as we celebrate the birth of the Christ child.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
The Pre-Election Paradox
While 70% say U.S. is a mess, 84% say they're happy. Is progress possible?
By Daniel Henninger
Thursday, January 3, 2008 12:01 a.m.
On New Year's Eve, Gallup's poll delivered unto us the good news that 84% of Americans say they are satisfied with how things are going for them personally. What Woody Allen might say about that phenomenal datum of good cheer one can only guess. One then has to account for the darker data Gallup released two weeks earlier: Some 70% of those responding believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
Explanations for this paradox would fill screen after screen of comments on Internet blogs, written no doubt by the 16% who can never be satisfied with "how things are going." Sample: It's the 46 million uninsured, stupid!
Starting tomorrow morning, with the results of the Iowa caucuses, the state of the nation likely will strike many as worse. Aaargh, those fools in Iowa have handed victory to the most dangerous man or woman in America. This we've gotta stop!
For the next 10 months they will be agitated, glum and apoplectic about many things. The candidates themselves, professional marketers of anxiety, will contribute. Then come a Wednesday morning after the presidential vote in November, nearly half the country, the losers, will see darkness falling across the land.
Before any of this happens, let's get a grip. To quote a children's classic I read out loud perhaps a hundred times: "Could be worse!"
Let me describe a pre-election moment of perspective this way: Later today some people who will start their evening with Iowa's caucus by watching angry Lou Dobbs--convincing themselves, again, that they and this country are getting shafted, and coming to this conclusion while watching a $700, 32-inch Samsung flat-panel, high-definition TV with Lou's sad song flowing through Monster digital coax cables to five Onkyo HT-SR800 home theater speakers.
If the possibility of human progress strikes you as so much background noise to the higher calling of political street-fighting, turn immediately to today's installment of Mitt versus Mike. Don't get me wrong, it is great theater. The perfect last act to a year spent living out of suitcases in Iowa was the irrepressible Elizabeth Edwards's verbal poke Monday to the eye of Michelle Obama. The Democratic candidates are kind of boring compared to their spouses.
None of this is to suggest that what is at stake in the election doesn't matter, or that those deeply invested in it are misallocating life's limited days. It matters.
It is to suggest that the never-off eye of modern political media leaves the impression that nothing good is possible. If progress happens, as with the surge in Iraq or a new therapy for cancer, it must be diminished by "analysis," listing four things that could "go wrong." As a way to absorb the way the world works, this is depressing. Good things happen. Get over it.
The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics annually publishes data on the well-being of the nation's children, thought by many to be the point of all this effort.
In 1980, deaths per 100,000 U.S. children aged 5 to 14 was 30.6; by 2004, that number fell to 16.8. Some 25 years ago, daily cigarette smoking among 12th graders was about 21%; in 2006 it was about 12% for both males and females. Childhood immunizations are rising steadily.
In August, the Centers for Disease Control noted that the death rate in 2004 fell by 3.8% in a year, "a record low historical figure." Life expectancy for men and women at birth in 1940 was 63 years; it is now nearly 78 years. We, or someone, must be doing something right.
Many people think that the war in Iraq was a mistake. It indeed contributes to the belief that the U.S. is on the wrong track. This will be argued more deeply when just two candidates are running, and millions of voters will weight Iraq heavily in their November choice. So be it.
That said, the remarkable 12-month progress of the surge strategy demonstrated it is not beyond the ability of "the system" to respond to seemingly overwhelming problems. Credit is due to Gen. David Petraeus certainly, but an infrastructure of U.S. military brains went into designing the Army's Counterinsurgency Manual, published in 2006. Its bibliography includes many studies published since 2003. As such it represents the U.S. military's "best practices" on fighting a modern enemy like al Qaeda, and the surge's success showed we are not helpless before this latest form of nihilism. This to some may be bitter progress, but it is so.
One needs reminding, amid a presidential election as wide open as this, that however other nations wrestle with their wrong directions, we use the system that the Founding Fathers left for us. What's worth remembering is that they knew politics piles up retarding levels of animosity, and so created a political system that would let us both vent spleen and move forward. Our progress, though, would nearly always be slow and by increments. Sometimes, it's hard to notice.
It will continue to be the case here that people are going to kvetch over corners of the culture--over immigration and national identity, or over relative wage levels, even as the rest of the world's poor finally start to join the middle class through globalizing trade channels (suppress those trade flows, as Congress is threatening, and you'll discover the real meaning of wrong direction). And not least there will be--and should be--concern over whether the progress I've described has the time or space in its good life for a sturdy spiritual soul.
The New Year demands an admission that some good has been achieved, not by the wave of a politician's magic wand but through many daily hands at work in the nation.
A reader of this column, Richard A. Fazzone of Potomac, Md., recently got these matters as well focused as I could, so with the presidential trenches waiting, he gets the final speech:
"There is no Great Depression, no WWII, no Cold War, no racism as it was in the 20th Century or before--no really big problem or solution. Unless something changes, voters want practically nothing from government, or more precisely, relatively few want the same thing, and without political consensus, a democracy does little or nothing new. In one respect, Mr. Henninger is correct to observe that 'in American politics, ambiguity is all you get,' but that may say enough. As another new year begins, we might consider ourselves fortunate for ambiguity, rather than the opposite and what would accompany it."
By Daniel Henninger
Thursday, January 3, 2008 12:01 a.m.
On New Year's Eve, Gallup's poll delivered unto us the good news that 84% of Americans say they are satisfied with how things are going for them personally. What Woody Allen might say about that phenomenal datum of good cheer one can only guess. One then has to account for the darker data Gallup released two weeks earlier: Some 70% of those responding believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
Explanations for this paradox would fill screen after screen of comments on Internet blogs, written no doubt by the 16% who can never be satisfied with "how things are going." Sample: It's the 46 million uninsured, stupid!
Starting tomorrow morning, with the results of the Iowa caucuses, the state of the nation likely will strike many as worse. Aaargh, those fools in Iowa have handed victory to the most dangerous man or woman in America. This we've gotta stop!
For the next 10 months they will be agitated, glum and apoplectic about many things. The candidates themselves, professional marketers of anxiety, will contribute. Then come a Wednesday morning after the presidential vote in November, nearly half the country, the losers, will see darkness falling across the land.
Before any of this happens, let's get a grip. To quote a children's classic I read out loud perhaps a hundred times: "Could be worse!"
Let me describe a pre-election moment of perspective this way: Later today some people who will start their evening with Iowa's caucus by watching angry Lou Dobbs--convincing themselves, again, that they and this country are getting shafted, and coming to this conclusion while watching a $700, 32-inch Samsung flat-panel, high-definition TV with Lou's sad song flowing through Monster digital coax cables to five Onkyo HT-SR800 home theater speakers.
If the possibility of human progress strikes you as so much background noise to the higher calling of political street-fighting, turn immediately to today's installment of Mitt versus Mike. Don't get me wrong, it is great theater. The perfect last act to a year spent living out of suitcases in Iowa was the irrepressible Elizabeth Edwards's verbal poke Monday to the eye of Michelle Obama. The Democratic candidates are kind of boring compared to their spouses.
None of this is to suggest that what is at stake in the election doesn't matter, or that those deeply invested in it are misallocating life's limited days. It matters.
It is to suggest that the never-off eye of modern political media leaves the impression that nothing good is possible. If progress happens, as with the surge in Iraq or a new therapy for cancer, it must be diminished by "analysis," listing four things that could "go wrong." As a way to absorb the way the world works, this is depressing. Good things happen. Get over it.
The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics annually publishes data on the well-being of the nation's children, thought by many to be the point of all this effort.
In 1980, deaths per 100,000 U.S. children aged 5 to 14 was 30.6; by 2004, that number fell to 16.8. Some 25 years ago, daily cigarette smoking among 12th graders was about 21%; in 2006 it was about 12% for both males and females. Childhood immunizations are rising steadily.
In August, the Centers for Disease Control noted that the death rate in 2004 fell by 3.8% in a year, "a record low historical figure." Life expectancy for men and women at birth in 1940 was 63 years; it is now nearly 78 years. We, or someone, must be doing something right.
Many people think that the war in Iraq was a mistake. It indeed contributes to the belief that the U.S. is on the wrong track. This will be argued more deeply when just two candidates are running, and millions of voters will weight Iraq heavily in their November choice. So be it.
That said, the remarkable 12-month progress of the surge strategy demonstrated it is not beyond the ability of "the system" to respond to seemingly overwhelming problems. Credit is due to Gen. David Petraeus certainly, but an infrastructure of U.S. military brains went into designing the Army's Counterinsurgency Manual, published in 2006. Its bibliography includes many studies published since 2003. As such it represents the U.S. military's "best practices" on fighting a modern enemy like al Qaeda, and the surge's success showed we are not helpless before this latest form of nihilism. This to some may be bitter progress, but it is so.
One needs reminding, amid a presidential election as wide open as this, that however other nations wrestle with their wrong directions, we use the system that the Founding Fathers left for us. What's worth remembering is that they knew politics piles up retarding levels of animosity, and so created a political system that would let us both vent spleen and move forward. Our progress, though, would nearly always be slow and by increments. Sometimes, it's hard to notice.
It will continue to be the case here that people are going to kvetch over corners of the culture--over immigration and national identity, or over relative wage levels, even as the rest of the world's poor finally start to join the middle class through globalizing trade channels (suppress those trade flows, as Congress is threatening, and you'll discover the real meaning of wrong direction). And not least there will be--and should be--concern over whether the progress I've described has the time or space in its good life for a sturdy spiritual soul.
The New Year demands an admission that some good has been achieved, not by the wave of a politician's magic wand but through many daily hands at work in the nation.
A reader of this column, Richard A. Fazzone of Potomac, Md., recently got these matters as well focused as I could, so with the presidential trenches waiting, he gets the final speech:
"There is no Great Depression, no WWII, no Cold War, no racism as it was in the 20th Century or before--no really big problem or solution. Unless something changes, voters want practically nothing from government, or more precisely, relatively few want the same thing, and without political consensus, a democracy does little or nothing new. In one respect, Mr. Henninger is correct to observe that 'in American politics, ambiguity is all you get,' but that may say enough. As another new year begins, we might consider ourselves fortunate for ambiguity, rather than the opposite and what would accompany it."
No Conservatives!!!
By Harry Stein
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to the announcement that William Kristol will be writing a weekly column in the New York Times:
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Here is just a tiny, tiny sample of the reaction on the Huffington Post to the announcement that William Kristol will be writing a weekly column in the New York Times:
- “William ‘the Bloody’ Kristol is a beady eyed warmonger.”
- “Worthless suck up Kristol should be cleaning toilets in public restrooms for his GOP ‘friends.’”
- “I will never, ever, buy another issue of the newspaper, I will never again be a subscriber to your newspaper and I will do my level best to avoid any purchases from any NY Times advertiser.”
- “If the New York Times is going to hire a liar and a racist like Bill Kristol then they might as well hire Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, and Ari Fleischer.”
- “Kristol is an arrogant warmongering prick. I can’t stand the sight of him.”
- “Listening to Kristol, that war mongering crater face, is worse than listening to Bush, Cheney, and Richard Pearle all rolled up in one . . . I hate that decision and I will do everything I can to discredit this decision until they finally flush him down the toilet like the turd he is.”
And so it went, on this and dozens of other left-of-center sites. Sputtering fury. Vicious name-calling. Denunciations of the Times for this unspeakable act. Threats to cancel subscriptions and otherwise exact revenge.
For conservatives, long accustomed to self-serving liberal pieties about tolerance, the orgy of outrage at having to face an alien point of view was wonderful to behold, and no one enjoyed it more than the man at the storm’s center. As Kristol put it to Politico.com, with the obvious relish of the skinny guy on the beach who gets the girl in the fourth panel, “I was flattered watching blogosphere heads explode.” (This provoked a new round of outrage: “Lawd, this is one son of a bitch I detest,” a typical posting hissed. “Smarmy prick. I’m sure that amuses him even more.”)
In fact, about the only one seemingly surprised that Times readers would respond with such vehemence was the man most responsible for the appointment: editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal. Noting that he had trouble understanding “this weird fear of opposing views,” Rosenthal observed in an interview that Kristol “is a serious, respected conservative intellectual—and somehow that’s a bad thing. How intolerant is that?” There’s something almost touching in the naivety behind those words. Can Rosenthal truly be so unaware of the character of his own core readership? Does he actually believe that they’re open to challenge, or even reasonable back-and-forth? Doesn’t he read his own paper’s letters page? “David Brooks can write the mildest column in the world,” Bernard Goldberg observes, “and the letters to the editor act like he’s Hitler.” Now, to their horror, letter-writers face the prospect of regularly waking up to a leading exemplar of a far more aggressive conservatism—a muscular supporter of the war who has characterized the Times itself as “irredeemable.”
According to The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, “What this hire demonstrates is how successfully the right has intimidated the mainstream media. Their constant demonizing of the New York Times as the tool of the liberal elite worked.” What the appointment really suggests, however, is a degree of desperation at the Times that only its worst enemies have wished on that venerable institution. Always remarkable for the arrogance with which it brushed aside criticism, the paper has long cast itself as the unimpeachable arbiter of reality; and no one has proven less inclined to admit error (or give conservatives a fair shake) than that determinedly leftist child of the sixties, publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger. Yet after plummeting ad sales and circulation cut the stock price steeply enough to put even a family-controlled board on edge, Sulzberger was moved to do the hitherto unthinkable in a belated effort to broaden the paper’s appeal and reclaim its once-vaunted reputation for balance.
Will it work? Don’t count on it. Dramatic as the gesture is, it is as unlikely to impress those on the right hostile to the paper as it has those up in arms on the left. Perhaps the most amusing reaction to the news was posted by Web pundit Steve Boriss, who speculated that Kristol would serve as a Trojan horse for his Weekly Standard boss, Rupert Murdoch, weakening reader commitment to the Times and so helping Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. “Murdoch may understand Times readers better than the Times does,” Boriss wrote, “recognizing it is contrary to human nature for audiences to enjoy columns written by those with whom they disagree. . . . for Times readers who can easily avoid daily exposure to conservative views, Bill Kristol will not only seem wrong, but also selfish, mean-spirited, and morally deficient.”
Kristol’s arrival may have a bigger impact on morale in-house, since in their political sensibilities Times staffers are pretty much a microcosm of the Upper West Side. Already there had been much newsroom grousing about the ideological transgressions of the gentlemanly Brooks and Book Review and now Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, who has opened up the book coverage somewhat to conservative thought. As Brooks once wryly put it, “Being the house conservative at the New York Times is like being the chief rabbi in Mecca.”
The conservative website TheNoseOnYourFace.com offered an inspired take by imagining Sulzberger sending his staff a memo detailing the paper’s newly instituted “Neo-Con Sensitivity Training Program.” It read in part:
Like you and I, Bill Kristol puts his pants on one leg at a time—he’s just thinking about dead Iraqi babies, single malt Scotch, and his Haliburton dividends checks while he’s doing it. My point is that we should try to view him as just another staff member, and try to find common ground and mutual respect. Also, as a general rule, try to avoid startling him and limit direct eye contact to less than two seconds.Perhaps most telling in the response to Kristol’s hiring, almost no one seems to have taken it the way that Rosenthal hoped—as a chance to engage with an alternative point of view. In a liberal universe where the other side is wrong—evil—by definition, that’s simply not how things are done. Over and over on the Web, one found variations on the following: “I never read William Saphire [sic], and I never read David Brooks. I will take great pleasure in never reading Bill Kristol!”Mr. Kristol is a neo-con, as in neo-conservative. Your NCSTP training will offer a more in-depth explanation of the difference between a standard-grade conservative and neo-con, but for now, imagine the difference between a really bad case of the flu and full-blown AIDS.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Update
Hello all,
C.A.A. took an extended break during the chaos of the holidays but will resume with regular posts starting tomorrow.
Stay tuned...
C.A.A. took an extended break during the chaos of the holidays but will resume with regular posts starting tomorrow.
Stay tuned...
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