Who—Whom?

Legalize Them

2009-05-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm watching a History Channel doc about drug use in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

During that period, both cocaine and opiates were readily available and widely consumed in this country. They were prescribed by doctors to cure ailments and taken for recreation by a wide range of Americans, from poor black youths to wealthy, middle age white women. They could be found in pharmacies and obtained through the mail.

Did society fall apart? No. There were coke and opiate addicts, sure, but there are coke and opiate addicts now, too. That's an unchanging problem, one attributable to enduring aspects of our flawed nature.

However, the menace of gang violence was virtually nonexistent, because drugs were mainstream and legal, distributed by companies and medical professionals. If we returned to that model (but with more government oversight), we would cure -- or at least greatly diminish -- a national scourge.

The legalization and regulation of all drugs, from marijuana to LSD to heroin, would reduce crime and minimize fatalities associated with dirty product. It would be a boon for poor minorities, whose cultures are deeply rooted in the drug trade, and who would surely take quickly to its legal manifestation, too.

It's hard to say if addiction rates would increase, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did. However, addiction to certain hard drugs is not as bad as it is often made out to be. It is a misunderstood condition. Opiate addiction, for instance, is much easier managed than alcoholism: A junkie rises early, goes to bed early, and is fairly level and clearheaded -- provided he has his fix. Cocaine users are more erratic, yet they too can typically function on-point so long as they have access to their sweet powder. Legalization would lower prices through open competition and the end of certain risk-costs, and make every fix just around the corner.

Widespread addiction is a troubling prospect, but last time opiates and cocaine were legal, society survived just fine. We should have a little more faith in people, a little less complacency about the state's unnecessary, immoral repression of natural urges and natural flora.

Sex in Public

2009-05-05T04:55:00.000-07:00

Rod Dreher, channeling Wendell Berry, declares, “you cannot have a workable order as long as both economic and sexual decisions are wholly privatized.”

Isn't this exactly why it’s so important for same-sex marriage to be fleshed out in the public square, heartily explained to folks, and instituted democratically on a state by state basis?

As I see it, the old sexual order—with its whispers, discretion, euphemisms, and rigid tradition-defined categories/boundaries—was far more “privatized” than the new one.

Now, sexuality is discussed frankly. Today, we openly manipulate mores to suit our tastes and needs. There is, if anything, a total lack of the private: Everything, from marriage to masturbation, is public domain material, stuff dealt with by teachers and TV show hosts and everyone in between.

Dreher is totally wrong in suggesting that we’ve “privatized” sex, when in reality the individual has never been so sidelined. Once, sexuality was a bedroom matter. People were limited in their wisdom and options by a lack of overt social interest in the matter. In 2009, sex is in the boardroom, the cloak room, the classroom, the news/media room, and beyond.

We are experiencing the socialization of sex, not its privatization, carried out by liberal and conservative alike, both of whom mistrust the moral decision making capacity of the individual and the family, both of whom think collectivization is the only efficient means of ensuring a stable social order.

Whether this impulse is good or bad I don't know, and I've never known anything else, but it seems to me the case.

Bullshit

2009-05-03T20:27:00.000-07:00

Abraham Lincoln destroyed American democracy, but Jack Kemp thinks he saved it.

And, imagine, that’s one of the less foolish notions floated in this, Kemp’s latest and last column. (I hate to slight the departed, but it’s all so dreadful!)

Kemp is one of those masqueraders who calls himself conservative while preaching the most radical and revolutionary Jacobin garbage. The daring of these people, really. Only in a nation totally politically illiterate—only in a nation like this—could so much nonsense go on with so few people calling BS.

Specter: Red (White and Blue) Tory

2009-05-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

Specter has little regard for parties and movements. He is a man who serves the people, a man of, for, and by them. He votes the interests of Pennsylvania. He votes the interests of the United States. He has no need and no desire to flatter the theory-driven assumptions of a particular creed.

These things render him a rarity in the tedious world of American politics, a world full of tiny crooks and cranks who want nothing more than to be part of a crowd. The right crowd, preferably, but really any will do.

Specter is a different creature. He stands on his own two feet. He follows no program. He takes issues one at a time, evaluating them honestly, without ideological prejudgment.

For this fair and measured, pragmatic and solutions-oriented disposition, he is loathed by conservatives and distrusted by liberals. It is proof of our degenerate state that independence of thought is today scorned rather than seen for what it truly is: A virtue supreme.

I place Specter within the Red Tory tradition, a distressingly, depressingly quiet strain of American conservatism. Like any good Red Tory, Specter proves that one can be conservative without being right wing.

The senator is protective of the “little guy.” His conservatism, which is deeply paternal, grows from this impulse. He is a partisan of the middle class, as it exists along Main Street, not in pristine corporate suburbs.

Unlike the right wing radicals who now dominate Republicanism, his conservatism is—surprise, surprise—actually about conserving. Specter champions the midcentury socioeconomic consensus that led America to the top. He is sympathetic to labor, socially tolerant without being mindlessly progressive, friendly to matters of personal freedom (from guns to abortion), convinced that the market exists for people and must be manipulated to serve the common good.

The bailout highlights his Tory tendencies. In propping up the companies, Specter was not supporting government interference so much as he was supporting social order. The left-conservative seeks continuum and guards the status quo. He abhors large, sudden change because it tends to uproot, overturn, and otherwise harmfully effect ordinary people.

Ordinary people are Specter’s people. He is their gray tribune.

Specter is an awkward fit in either party because he has managed to reconcile what are too often considered utterly disparate impulses.

The hacks hate him because he reveals just how petty and corrupt they are. His refusal to play the game has made him many enemies, but it has earned him a friend in the American people.

Yes, he's a Red Tory: Red, white, and blue.

For Civilization

2009-04-20T18:14:00.001-07:00

"The usage of waterboarding," says Smitty, "could not have been more discriminate while still occurring. This was not wanton mayhem."

KSM was waterboarded 183 times in one month. All things being equal, that's 6 times a day, once every 4 hours, for 30 days straight. Discriminate? Come again, Smitty?

Smitty goes on: "W was granted authorization to engage in WAR, not some pleasant, abstract weekend discourse, oh purveyors of weenie-hood."

Yes, I agree 100%. War is hell, no doubt. But that doesn't give us the freedom to do whatever we please whenever we please to whomever we please.

We are a civilized people. We are a Christian people. (So many conservatives claim the privileges of these mantles, but then refuse the associated responsibilities.) We are the heirs of reason, rationality, rule of law. We are blessed with a heritage of liberal treatment for our fellow men in all but the most dire circumstances.

In the field, with shells falling, I can understand -- even excuse -- almost anything. But in a secure prison totally removed from the random hazards of battle . . . then I expect modern, civilized people to act like modern, civilized people.

Robert Stacy McCain thinks it's cool -- that's the vibe I get, cool -- to act like a damn Third World thug, torturing people for thrill and punishment and, oh yeah, 'information.'

He can reconcile waterboarding and other forms of torture (some of which were definitely worse) with our society. Save for a few highly implausible scenarios, I can't. I don't see how any Christian conservative can.

I read a lot into torture. To my eye, once you start torturing, you quit being civilized, you join the barbarians hacking away at one another. That's all barbarians do: Find reasons or make excuses to draw the blood of their enemies.

Our entire civilization rests on the notions that all people -- not just the few who belong to the immediate polity -- are endowed with dignity, dignity that must be respected, dignity that's protected by a vast shield of laws and rules and mores and norms.

Abandon those standards and you abandon everything. Abandon them and you signal your willingness to live in the chaos of a society governed by men, not laws, where everything is relative and anyone susceptible to the forces of might, rather than right.

Me, I choose to stand for civilization.

McCain's Raging Heart Syndrome

2009-04-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Other McCain: Dunk 'em again!

Robert Stacy McCain pretends to be this model conservative, yet he's always quick to abandon the belief that separates liberalism from conservatism: Unflinching, unapologetic devotion to the rule of law.

Liberals chafe against the law, which is blind to 'good' or 'bad,' black or white, male or female, and other superficialities and biographical details. Liberals are bleeding hearts, and their emotions get the better of them. They are compelled by sentiment to bend, ignore, overcome any law that they view as oppressive or injurious to black drug dealers, Hispanic border jumpers, whomever.

'Conservatives' of RSM's sort suffer from the opposite of bleeding heart syndrome. Call it raging heart syndrome: Raw emotions -- fury, hatred, contempt -- overwhelm the afflicted individual, forcing him to discard the liberal, rights based legal framework that has for centuries made us a free and orderly society.

Americans have long been adamant about extending to everyone -- even to monsters like the Nazis -- those basic rights which separate the mature order of the West from the totalitarian whimsy of the Orient. This is not the time to drop that wonderful and most civilized impulse.

I too have had fantasies of butchering our enemies, preferably in public (downtown Manhattan, say, in the footprints of the Trade Towers . . . let the cops and firefighters at 'em first). But that would be giving into the same vile, illiberal, and anti-human spirit that animates Islamists.

All Americans, but especially conservatives, must guard against raging heart syndrome. We must stand by our ancient legal methods and institutions. Torture and this practice of veiled back room 'trials' -- their outcomes all but predetermined -- might be satisfying and vindicating on a primal level. But they're ultimately great betrayals of the very principles that make our country and our civilization worth fighting so damn hard to defend.

Forthcoming

2009-04-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

An argument for New England
independence and the establishment
of the Green Tree Republic.

Andy McCarthy Has Huge Fucking Balls

2009-04-17T19:34:00.001-07:00

How else can you explain something as brazen as this?

Andy McCarthy, one of the loudest and most shameless torture apologist at National Review, is throwing a genuine civil libertarian hissy fit about Homeland Security's recent interest (perhaps undue) in right wing extremism.

Get this:

The DHS intelligence assessment is a betrayal of these values, and a frightening indication that those trusted to wield power in defense of our Constitution are unfamiliar with what the Constitution stands for.

And this:

We on the Right are deeply concerned — more concerned, historically, than our opposite numbers — about threats to civil society. Ordered liberty requires order.

Andy McCarthy accusing other people of not understanding the business of rights! Andy McCarthy questioning earnestly -- and with, apparently, zero irony -- the judgment and intentions of those in power! A-goddamn-mazing!

Now, I know, McCarthy's defense is predictable. I'll even make it for him: "We are citizens of the United States. The terrorists are not. (Though some of them are, but never mind that.) Thus we get rights, liberty, and little American flags, and they get simulated drownings."

To which I'll respond, as I always do, "It's called being a decent, civilized, liberal people who respect human dignity regardless of the words on a sheet of paper!" (Sorry if this isn't the most legalistically rigorous or rigorously legal argument, but I think the torture memos have shown the potential darkness of the lawyer's mind.)

I simply can't understand these bastards, bastards whose human goodness is defined and limited by longitude and latitude.

This takes serious guts. McCarthy can find no good reason why we shouldn't be throwing people against walls, painfully contorting their bodies, stuffing them into tiny insect-filled boxes, stripping them naked and forcing them to rub together, going at them with dogs, depriving them for many days of sleep, sticking them in freezers . . . But he simply WILL NOT ABIDE the government monitoring the activities of the political fringes, because liberty is sacred and rights inviolable!

Give me liberty or give me the imminent threat of death!

P.S. Excuse the profanity. As regular readers can attest, I typically avoid cursing. But this kind of hypocrisy sends me so far over the edge that, that . . . that I'm like Wile E. Coyote pumping his legs in thin air, the cliff ledge ten feet behind. Yeah, it's like that.

Scar Tissue of the Mind

2009-04-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

[T]he memo "concludes that 'the use of waterboarding constitutes a threat of imminent death,' but is nonethless permissible and legal because it does not result in "prolonged mental harm."

--Jane Hamsher @ firedoglake

I'm reminded (as I am so often) of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who as a young man was arrested by the czar's secret police for his association with the subversive Petrashevsky Circle. He was sentenced to death and brought before a firing squad. Obviously, it was all a ruse: Just before the squad let loose, an imperial messenger arrived, bearing a letter of amnesty.

Dostoevsky was haunted by the experience for the rest of his days, and it's thought to have contributed to his turn away from sunny liberalism and toward the morbid existentialism and 'fear and trembling' Christianity for which he is famous.

Brushes with death are almost by definition scarring events. That's why totalitarian regimes use waterboarding, fake firing squads, and so on. They are known to traumatize, breaking strong men, leaving them whimpering emotional cripples who pose no danger to the establishment.

As a semi-relevant side note, Dostoevsky's father was fatally, er, boozeboarded: His serfs knocked him down, restrained him, and poured vodka down his nose and mouth until he drowned.

WTF is Dave Neiwert Talking About?

2009-04-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Do you have any idea, because I sure don't.

Neiwert, amazingly, cannot distinguish a Randian from a Paulite from a Palinista from a lawn flamingo from a choo-choo train from a sock from a . . . well, you get the picture.

Congratulations, Dave! These are the three batshit craziest paragraphs I have ever read.

And with right-wing populism, it's the wealthy who stand to benefit, which is why they so willingly underwrite it. This is why Henry Ford -- the ultimate enabler of fascism -- is such a seminal figure for American right-wing populists. It's also why Ayn Rand and Atlas Wanked are so important in their mythology.

It might, in fact, more accurately be called "sucker populism."

We certainly saw an upsurge in right-wing populism in Republican ranks in the 2008 campaign, reflected both by Sarah "Evita" Palin's unmistakable right-wing populism, as well as Ron Paul's insurgency (there were a lot of Ron Paul supporters at these Tea Tantrums). There's been Glenn Beck's soaring popularity -- during which time, you'll also recall, he eagerly defended the AIG bonuses. And now the Tantrums.

. . . Say again?

Yessir, when you see Henry Ford, Atlas Shrugged, Sarah Palin, Eva Peron, Ron Paul, and Glenn Beck thrust together under one banner, you know there’s some awfully sloppy conflation and awfully brazen obfuscation going down.

Let's try'n sort these out.

Henry Ford was a mainly apolitical capitalist with vague and fleeting feelings for fascist Germany. ("Enabler"? Nah.) He harbored many of the standard prejudices of his day. He was a man interested in order, first and foremost, order and efficiency.

Atlas Shrugged is a book. It suggests a hyper-individualistic super-rational egoism as the ideal human disposition. It was written by a proud elitist and self-styled superwoman who rejected significant portions of 'Judeo-Christian' tradition and wished market relations to organize society.

Eva Peron was a social democrat with a passion for feminism and labor unionism.

Sarah Palin is an ideologically-confused Christian nationalist, maybe some kind of Jacksonian or neoconservative, ultimately a hack driven by an ornery, often senseless but plainly Middle American suspicion of cosmopolitan culture.

Ron Paul is a pretty standard libertarian with some ‘family values’ or traditionalist sympathies.

Glenn Beck is a sensationalist who prays upon lower class and white ethnic cultural anxieties. For cash money, lots of it.

So, what do these people have in common? Only that they were wrongly (if hilariously) clumped together for no apparent reason other than to sound all kinds of smart, and thus authoritative.

Dave imagines these are the ideological pillars and/or mythological figures of the new "right-wing populism."

In fact, they are not a uniform bunch in any important way. There's more difference than similarity. Ayn Rand would have hated Eva Peron, who would have laughed at Ron Paul, who is clearly at odds with Sarah Palin, and so on and so on.

They're not all right-wing and they're not all populists. Only Ron Paul and Glenn Beck have any true relevance to the Tea Parties, and in very different ways.

Try again, Dave?

American Road Trip

2009-04-16T11:56:00.001-07:00

Join Conor Friedersdorf as he makes his way across this great land of ours, bless it. Terrorists can destroy our mighty towers, but they can never destroy the spirit of Jack K.

On Carter, Bush, and Brews

2009-04-16T06:10:00.001-07:00

Will hopes mainstream conservatives seriously discuss an article they will never seriously discuss. So I'll throw down my two cents, instead.

Until Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter was the most conservative Democratic president since Grover Cleveland. (One of our finest, old Grover.)

I’m not referring to his philosophy, conservative in the agrarian tendency of Berry. I mean practically, policy-wise, Carter had a deep conservative streak. He was a liberal, no doubt, but one who approached important issues from the center-right.

Carter deregulated or initiated the deregulation of a number of major industries, including oil, trucking, rail, telecommunications, and the airlines. (Ronald Reagan was actually endorsed by the Teamsters after offering to slow the dismantling of the Interstate Commerce Commission.)

Carter empowered the Fed through the Depository Institution and Monetary Control Act, which the Mises Institute has called the “necessary first step in ending the harmful New Deal restrictions placed upon financial institutions.”

He resumed the work of Ford and Nixon with SALT II and spent $40 billion on the anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan. Now imagined a dove, he was in fact a military man, reinstating draft registration for young males and creating the Rapid Deployment Forces, the prototype for CENTCOM.

Carter’s reputation as a super-liberal screwball is less a product of his administration’s actions and more the result of his post-presidential activism, which has been at times extraordinarily offensive and frankly idiotic.

Bottom line: During a period when the Democrats lurched far left, Carter remained refreshingly moderate. He was a chronic bungler, a man ultimately outsized by his office, but to ignore his center-right achievements is unfair, to deny his unique conservatism is willful ignorance.

While we're on Carter . . . how much does he remind you of Dubya? Really, the parallels and similarities are too much to ignore.

Both are Southern evangelicals who emphasized 'compassion.' Both let the country run aground through criminal mismanagement. Both oversaw bailouts, oil crises, serious foreign policy errors, deregulation, multiplication of federal agencies. Both are a maddeningly strange blend of liberal and conservative. Both manage to simultaneously defy and represent the worst aspects of their respective parties.

And both, of course, are national regrets, utter failures who set the stage for the resurgence of the other side.

Unlike Bush, Carter has a saving grace: He saved American beer. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, "Mmm, beer." If only for that, I'll drink to his name.

The Tea Party . . . Party

2009-04-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

Jay Severin is a radical capitalist and fierce hawk who talks for Boston’s 96.9 WTKK.

He tearfully covered today’s demonstrations, praising the “patriots" in the streets, hurling slurs at President Obama, a man he routinely denounces as a “domestic enemy of the Constitution.”

This afternoon, Severin kept suggesting that the April 15 movement transition into an electoral machine. “The ‘Tea Party,’” he mused to co-gabber Michael Graham, “There’re worse names.”

[Redacted and edited for clarity: By the mental sketches of Severin] Severin sketched an interesting possibility (if improbability): A hard right caucus dedicated to laissez-faire economics and drastic reductions to the size and scope of government; the only explicitly nationalist party around; anti-immigrant, pro-military; deeply opposed to international organizations and hyper-sensitive of threats to the national interest.

Severin claimed the Tea Party could easily rope one-third of the popular vote. That’s a great exaggeration. He overestimates the radicalism of the white middle and lower middle classes. Yes, they’re hurting, especially the latter, and their anxieties are real.

But many are too proper, too gentle, too ‘Main Street conservative.’ They’d be repelled by the party's militancy and extremism (both rhetorical and policy-wise), by its thinly-veiled ethnic and racial chauvinism, by its violent undercurrents.

Scots-Irish, with their staunch individualism and warrior legacy, would be the natural constituency. The Tea Party would probably play well in the South and urban Middle West. Even there, I suspect libertarian extremism would mean quick termination of interest among blue collars.

What’s really fascinating about the party is that, whatever Severin might say, it wouldn’t be conservative. We’re talking about a coalition animated by two principles: The maximization of profit and the minimization of threats to national interests . . . in over-drive. We’re talking jungle capitalism and a three word foreign policy: “Islam delenda est.”

Where Ayn Rand and Curtis LeMay meet, there is the Tea Party. Where in that orgy of morally-sanctioned greed and jackboot diplomacy is there room for Sunday afternoon dinner? The Tea Party would be right wing, but not conservative.

Realizing that the Tea Party would strip the GOP of some of its worst elements, I badly want it to exist. And not just to exist, but to thrive. Of course, lacking a clear religious component, Christianists would by and large remain where they are, further strenghtening the forces of theoconservatism within the Republican fold.

You can’t win, can you?

Finally, a scenario, and questions:

Against all odds, the Tea Party explodes onto the stage of American politics. While largely rejected in areas like New England and the Pacific Northwest, it manages to establish significant national presence.

In the 2010 midterms, it grabs a few dozen seats in the House and even two or three in the Senate. A number of Republicans defect, filling its ranks. A few Democrats also join. Poised to make further gains in the next election, who runs for POTUS in 2012 under its banner?

How does that candidate change the election? How does the Tea Party alter our socio-political discourse? Is it ultimately a force for good or for bad?

"Show your work."

Update: For the record, the local Tea Party was a damn depressing circus act (where BHO citizenship-truthers can assemble free of harassment and mockery, there normal people should fear to tread). The rhetoric was generally over-the-top. All heat, no light. Organizers called it "huge," but it was dwarfed by the massive pro-immigrant march back in spring of 2006, which was at least three to five times as large.

Wet Towel

2009-04-15T19:01:00.000-07:00

It’s disgraceful, the press corps’ fawning and obsessive treatment of the Obama family dog. How brown, the newsroom noses . . .

Little surprise the dog comes from Ted Kennedy, last giant of America’s imperial clan of yesteryear, still the object of spellbound foot-licking and wide-eyed myth-weaving.

I despise the aristocratic dazzle surrounding certain political families. (I like to think this sentiment emerges from a Jeffersonian’s sturdy republicanism rather than a populist’s knee-jerk contempt of excellence.)

Either way, the animal’s ecstatic reception reveals a lonely nation yearning for the ritual, the passion, the majesty and mystery of royalism.

What has become of our ancient democratic sensibility? Why have we sacrificed the proud heritage of the Cincinnati to grovel before media-manufactured princes?

To take a step back and calmly survey our culture is to realize that we’re sliding deep into servility. We have long lost the ability to distinguish servant from master, a skill crucial to preserving a government -- a society! -- of, for, and by the people.

We are swooning ourselves into serfdom.

An example of hortatory pungency

2009-04-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

This is not.

"At its fundamental core, it's un-American."

"Fundamental core," like "wet water," you know?

UPDATE: Check page 2 of the article, Smitty.

What I Am (?)

2009-04-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

"John Courtney Murray’s fourfold classification was based on four different attitudes toward the organized Church and the organized American State: the conservative affirmed both; the traditionalist affirmed the Church but mistrusted the current State; the liberal affirmed the State but mistrusted the Church; and the radical said, "A plague on both your houses.'"

--Peter Kreeft @ First Things

Weird: I guess, yes, that I affirm the Church, yet I do not attend to it, and often I mistrust it altogether. I guess that makes me a sort of . . . postmodern traditionalist?

Road to Hell

2009-04-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

For all those interested in America's role in Somalia's ongoing crisis, Michael Maren's book, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity is a fascinating expose of good intentions gone awry.

Be Like Christ?

2009-04-13T13:12:00.001-07:00

In a post entitled "God bless the Navy Seals," Rod Dreher cheers: "Killed three Somali pirates, rescued the American hostage. Hooray!" This just above an open thread about Easter.

"Hooray"? Really, Rod? What's that about respect for all human life? What's that about all of us being sinners before the eyes of an angry God? What's that about forgiveness, turning the other cheek, loving thy enemy?

Just too easy, sometimes.

What We Have Sown

2009-04-13T09:26:00.001-07:00

With the explosion of Somali piracy, America is reaping what it has sown. In many ways, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for the emergence of high-seas crime threatening to disrupt important lanes of trade.

America’s support for a violent strongman during Somalia’s formative post-colonial years hindered the development of stable political institutions and severely complicated its capacity for effective self-rule and sustainable growth.

The country’s markets are also victims of foreign meddling, fatalities of the backhanded ‘charity’ which has made Western actors—and especially the U.S.—distrusted throughout the Third World. Rendered economically impotent through the misapplication of aid and assistance by the U.S. government and various NGOs, it is no surprise that Somalis have turned to brigandry for sustenance.

These actions we are now witnessing are not crimes of maliciousness or greed, but of desperation. They are sins of last resort . . .

We are happy to note that this article, which demonstrates clearly American complicity in the emergence of Somali piracy, has been picked up by CounterPunch. To continue reading, proceed here.

Dumb (What Else to Call It?)

2009-04-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

Robert Stacy McCain grows more narrow minded and paranoid by the day. Here he is spouting a short but chagrining rant about the horrors of . . . wait for it . . . PEOPLE WHO DON’T AGREE WITH HIM.

By McCain's twisted logic, anyone who diverges in the smallest detail from his rigid right wing ideology and then– gasp!—actually says so to his face, well, that person is a troll, unworthy of further attention, a bug-like creature to be stamped out ASAP.

And people actually think the internet facilitates meeting of the minds, yikes.

Once again, McCain manages to sum up in one post everything that's wrong with today's conservative movement: Knee-jerk suspicion of debate, reflexive hatred of difference, zero tolerance for those who stray from the party line.

Up in the Good Place, conservative icons—gracious conversationalists like WFB and Russell Kirk—must be pulling their hair out.

Read This Mag

2009-04-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Just felt like saying, Mother Jones has been awesome lately. This photo essay is absolutely chilling. And, for what it's worth, the MJ website is beautiful, especially in comparison to National Review or TAC.

Give Peace a Chance

2009-04-12T06:15:00.000-07:00

After success, system leaders inhabit a worldview of iron conservatism. After all, they are defending not ‘the nation’ but rather its universalist vision. … But how to defend everywhere with limited resources? ... First, grow and harden the administrative and regulatory bureaucracy to maximize revenue. Second, with this tax bounty, reify and militarize the state. This in no way implies militarizing the society; indeed, the society’s movement away from martial ardor is the core motivation for the state to assume the security burden. ... Hence the state effectively grows and separates to become its own subculture, or rather, a constellation of state subcultures, military and bureaucratic. …The vast American ‘Tribal confederacy’ of military societies, intelligence agencies, and defense contractors is the legacy of Cold War.

--Michael Vlahos, quoted by Michael Lind @ TAC

Vlahos speaks plainly the truth. There's no doubt that what remains of our free republic is jeopardized by the tribalism of the military-security apparatus: The industrialization of defense by private players; the growing rift between the civilian and military realms; the troubling phenomenon of a distinct, generational martial caste; the multiplication of security organizations; the increased prominence of mercenaryism -- these factors combine to form a scary picture of a praetorian future.

Conservatives must work day and night to reverse the militarization of the state. That means severe cuts in "defense" spending, staunch opposition to foreign escapades, the dismantling of our vast network of bases across the globe, the passage of anti-mercenary laws, perhaps even 'term limits' for military service. Basically, whatever's necessary to make America once again a peacable, neutral republic whose contact with other nations consists solely of the exchange of commercial and cultural goods.

Christ is King

2009-04-12T05:48:00.000-07:00

Nasty Insinuations

2009-04-11T15:31:00.000-07:00

Smitty stupidly sullies Robert Stacy McCain’s fine blog with nasty insinuations and borderline libels of those who can no longer defend themselves.

He quotes Philo from The View from Alexandria:

Think about the peace movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Some of those people were naive, thinking that if Britain and the United States disarmed and made enough concessions to Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, there would be peace. But some were Soviet or Nazi sympathizers. Some were Soviet agents.

Yes, some were naive, and some were symps or spies, but most were neither. Don't let Smitty and Philo convince you otherwise.

Most were good, ordinary, patriotic Americans (the type RSM claims to champion) who wanted nothing more than for their beloved country to remain a peaceable republic with no stake in the endless and unintelligible quarrels of foreign tribes. Among them: Gerald Ford, Robert Taft, John F. Kennedy, William Regnery, and William F. Buckley.

In the lead-up to WWII, 800,000 citizens from all walks of life -- senators and doctors, deans and farmers -- joined America First, the spearhead of the neutrality movement and the largest protest group in U.S. history. The Tea Party folks dream of such numbers!

Don’t let the revisionists deceive: Until Pearl Harbor, Americans wanted nothing to do with the bloody affairs of other continents. National polling as late as August 1941 put non-interventionist sentiment at 83%.

Even in world-wise New York City, 70% of respondents to a Daily News survey said, “No, the United States shall not enter the war to help Great Britain defeat Hitler.”

Heartlanders were even more opposed: 95% of those questioned by the Indianapolis News opposed war.

Contra Philo, the mainstream peace movement of the 1930s and early 1940s had no interest in disarming or making concessions to queer little dictators with funny mustaches. We’re talking about brawny bastards like Hanford MacNider, the first commander of the American Legion, who served with distinction in WWI, and General Robert E. Wood, a prominent military man of the day of West Point pedigree.

America First spoke for a broad swath of the country, which was solidly antiwar, when it called for “an impregnable national defense” and supported the build-up of men and the manufacturing of munitions to protect our land and that of our immediate neighbors.

Says Philo, to the dour head shaking of Smitty, "Pax Americana is over."

If only! Although we have few good reasons to be sticking our noses into overseas hornets' nests -- and even fewer resources to be squandering -- establishment politicians in both diseased parties will continue to waste American blood and treasure on -- haha! -- "making the world safer."

Liberals like Smitty and RSM don't care about your tax dollars going to fight other people's battles. They are bleeding heart spendthrifts who think you should be busting your you-know-what so that boys from Nebraska and New Hampshire can die to take down tin pot loonies in Africa and Asia.

When will they learn? Have these scoundrels no sense of patriotism?

Where Democracy is a Verb, Not a Noun

2009-04-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

The Republic of Indian Stream was a small, unrecognized, constitutional republic in North America, along the section of the US-Canada border that divides the Canadian province of Quebec from the US state of New Hampshire. It existed from July 9, 1832 to 1835. Described as "Indian Stream Territory, so-called" by the United States census-taker in 1830, the area was named for Indian Stream, a small watercourse. It had an organized elected government and constitution which served about three hundred citizens.

[. . .]

The [Indian Stream] Republic encompassed the northern reaches of what is now the state of New Hampshire, including the four Connecticut Lakes. While the British claimed the southeasternmost branch (the chain of Connecticut Lakes), the U.S. claimed the border as we know it today (i.e., Hall's Stream, to the west, which is, arguably, the "northwesternmost headwater" of the Connecticut). Both sides sent in tax-collectors and debt-collecting sheriffs. The double taxation angered the population, and the Republic was formed to put an end to the issue until such time as the United States and Great Britain could reach a settlement on the boundary line.

The Republic ceased to operate independently in 1835 when the New Hampshire Militia occupied the area, following a vote by the Indian Stream Congress authorizing annexation to the United States. The vote arose from disquiet regarding a prior incident in which a group of "streamers" invaded Canada to free a fellow citizen who had been arrested by a British sheriff and magistrate. The reason for the arrest was an unpaid hardware-store debt, and the offender faced confinement in a Canadian debtors' prison. The invading posse shot up the judge's home where their comrade was being held, and this caused a diplomatic crisis, a so-called 'international incident'. The British ambassador to the United States was appalled at the idea of a war over a matter so trivial as a hardware-store debt and quickly agreed to engage in negotiations to resolve the border disputes that had remained outstanding since the time of the Treaty of Paris (1783).

Those were the days . . .

I dream of a land of legion republics, each like Indian Stream: Stamp-sized nations of free men and women, self-governing and sulf-sustaining, where democracy is a verb, not a noun, and people know one another's faces, living proudly not just among, but with, the tall, sturdy trees.

Freedom versus Tradition in 2009

2009-04-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to have a rational political philosophy that includes commitments both to maximizing freedom and preserving tradition?

Post-WWII conservatism was predicated on the affirmative. The menace of powerful authoritarian regimes allowed the tension between the two impulses to be ignored. In the face of barracks communism -- illiberal, anti-Christian, frighteningly dissimilar to Anglo-American folkways -- love of liberty and devotion to Western heritage seemed inseparable, and both could be pursued through the conservative policy of decentralization and deference to the states and people.

Today, in a very different world, their reconciliation is an increasing challenge, and it threatens to break the Republican Party, which stood in the waning hours of the Cold War as Main Street's finest defender, espousing a sensible blend of individualism and respect for cultural first principles.

It seems more and more that freedom is forwarded only at the expense of tradition, and tradition defended at the disadvantaging of freedom.

From gay marriage to deregulation, freedom and tradition seem not just incompatible but oppositional. Gay marriage, for example, defies millennia of social practice, but its legalization would unarguably be a multiplication of choice, and thus a move toward increased freedom. Deregulation facilitates economic liberty, but the violence of the free market can be a destructive, deracinating force: uprooting families, weakening local business, encouraging the vice of hyperconsumption, etc.

The dilemmas go on and on. Defending, for instance, the Second Amendment is a liberty-friendly effort, but weak handgun laws might wreak havoc in poor urban areas, breaking up families, disturbing the peace, stimulating gang violence and drug trade. And the corrosive effects of free trade on communities in both the first and third worlds is -- not always, but not infrequently -- awful, painful, and maddening.

The GOP cannot resolve the issue -- is not willing to. It trudges on, proclaiming its dual loyalties to freedom and tradition, all the while wondering why once loyal voters are defecting in waves.

The upshot of the Bush years is a Democratic Party of Jim Webbs and Bob Conleys, a Democratic Party that appears in many ways more responsive both to Americans' love of liberty and their fear of losing the land of their childhood.

Significant

2009-04-11T05:46:00.000-07:00

I was watching MSNBC's coverage of the tornadoes in Tennessee. One woman interviewed was ask to describe what she'd been through.

She relayed the chain of events, mentioning how she and her "...[noticeable pause]...significant other" did this and that. Then she mentioned her daughter. "Oh, how old is she?" cooed the MSNBC news-ditz. "She's 30. A young lady with Downs' Syndrome," explained the woman. She continued as to how she evaded the tornado: "Susan, Elizabeth, and I . . ."

Sort of an awkward scene. Saddening. How long before, down there, "significant other" can be "wife"?

The Stranger

2009-04-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

Many observers have noted Andrew Sullivan’s utter inability to comprehend the Tea Party Movement.

What must be remembered is that Sullivan is a foreigner, a resident alien who has taken awkwardly to American political customs. Some of his allies dismiss outright the matter of extraction: Origins mean nothing, they cry, confident in a cosmopolitan creed that stupidly deems nationality a mere detail.

Of course, origins do mean something. Indeed, they mean everything, though in this deracinated age it is not just impolite but borderline immoral to say as much.

Sullivan has dwelled in the Boston-D.C. corridor for a couple decades, moving from one intellectual tower to the next, glancing down now and then or peering occasionally westward, a sneer stitched across his face. His America consists of a few liberal yankee cities and a colony of homosexuals on Cape Cod.

Yes, Sullivan has studied America’s people, her institutions, her tendencies—studied them closely, yet from afar . . . and arrived at all the wrong conclusions. What else to expect from an alien who probably considers Northern Virginia the boonies?

Widespread Anglophilia leads many Americans to believe that the Brits are ‘just like us.’ This isn’t at all true. Sullivan is proof positive that our culture and theirs parted ways long ago.

Recognizing Sullivan’s innate and insurmountable Otherness, and appreciating it to be a genuine handicap, is crucial to deciphering his commentary, which is infamously riddled with glaring miscalculations and misreadings of the American temperament.

In particular, he has terrible difficulty translating and conversating in the language of American conservatism. Sullivan is all but deaf to the interests and anxieties of right-of-center Middle America. When he deigns to address ordinary conservatives, he speaks British Toryism with a Harvard accent.

It’s no wonder he is uncomfortable with the Tea Party Movement, which comes from the wonderfully American school of anti-authoritarian direct action. Toryism is fixated on the maintenance of proper authority, and lacks the radical loathing of state power central to American conservatism, which has from the start borne the vice or virtue of an unbalanced love of liberty.

Sullivan knows a genteel conservatism based on prudence and privilege and prerogative. He cannot stomach the conservatism of America, manifested in the Tea Party Movement, which embraces the traumatic energy of the demos.

Bloodthirsty Patriotic Fervor

2009-04-10T06:48:00.000-07:00

If that's what's really in store for the April 15 protests, I may just have to clear my busy schedule of blogging and beer drinking and mosey on down to the local tea party.

More Lies from Marriage Exclusivists

2009-04-10T06:10:00.000-07:00

By now, we're all used to the lies and half-truths of the marriage exclusivists -- those so-called conservatives who refuse to support the distinctly conservative project of expanding the stabilizing institution of marriage.

This distortion, however, takes the (wedding) cake:

By only one vote, the Vermont House just voted to override Governor Douglas's veto, overturning the common sense definition of marriage shared by people of diverse faiths, backgrounds, nations, and political parties. Today is truly a sad day for Vermont and this nation.

--National Organization for Marriage

"By only one vote" leads you to believe that the tally was 51-50 or 101-100, that same-sex marriage was controversial and divisive, just barely eeking by.

In fact, the vote was 100-49 in the House and 23-5 in the Senate.

That's after the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously recommended legalization. After the Senate passed H275 26-4. After the House Judiciary Committee approved it 8-2. After the House okayed it 95-52.

So, basically, same-sex marriage received broad support at multiple levels in multiple instances. Don't let the radical, anti-conservative exclusivists at NOM deceive you.

Ain't My America

2009-04-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

Just heard President Obama claim that we're not in any way, shape, or form a "Christian nation."

Given our crystal clear Protestant roots; given the gigantic shadow of Christianity in public rhetoric and the civic sphere, past and present; given the importance of holidays like Easter and Christmas; given that three-quarters of Americans continue to identify as Christians . . . I don't see how we are anything but a "Christian nation."

That doesn't mean we have a Christian government. We don't. But what else do 76% of us share? These days, not race; soon, perhaps, not even language. Christianity is our greatest common denominator. It dominates our politics and distinguishes us from Europe. Our folk culture is drenched in it, and in so many ways it defines what it means to be American.

The Mother Church

2009-04-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

I posted on it yesterday here. But the full interview - by the indispensable Johann Hari - is here. In it, the new Catholic convert tackles the Pope's ancient bigotry toward gay people.

--Andrew Sullivan @ The Daily Dish

That's the point: The Pope's "bigotry toward gay people" is ancient, flowing from dogma that has existed for thousands of years.

The Roman Catholic Church is one of the oldest organizations in the world, truly antique. Its prejudices were set one hundred generations ago. Why should it tailor fundamental beliefs in order to conform to a few-decades'-old cultural shift?

The appeal of Catholicism is its permanence, its obduracy, its resistance to fads, its enduring loyalty to first principles. Who is Blair -- a Protestant yesterday, a Catholic today -- to question the time-tested values of a church that has been saying the same things since before Rome fell?

Who Owes Who?

2009-04-09T10:20:00.001-07:00

"Watching President Obama apologize last week for America's arrogance - before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans - helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions... Is this what Sen. John Kerry meant when he once suggested that American policy must pass a "global test"? Or what Barack Obama meant when he said last week that we have failed to "appreciate Europe's leading role in the world"? Or when he spoke of "change we can believe in"? And just who are "we"?"

--Rick Santorum, via Andrew @ The Daily Dish

Ah, but didn't we first owe our freedom to the sacrifices of Frenchmen?

Braindead

2009-04-09T09:37:00.001-07:00

Conservative radiomen are presently freaking out over the 'squishy' response of liberals to the Maersk Alabama situation. No shock there: To wingers, every gang of AK-wielding tribesmen is reason for prepping the nukes, and any lesser response is cowardly appeasement.

What's amazing, though, is just how averse these demagogues are to the notion that there are underlying causes to piracy (and, certainly, there are). They visualize the Somalis as villains in full; black hearted, cold blooded barbarians compulsively terrorizing because . . . well, that's what 'bad guys' do.

Michael Graham, a fiery libertarian populist and staunch hawk who gabs for Boston's 96.9 WTKK and contributes occasionally (check that link!) to National Review, was particularly incensed this sunny morn.

I listened to his show during the a.m. commute, shaking my head as over and over he slammed and dismissed attempts to contextualize the pirates' actions. He laughed at callers who offered motives and derided journalists who sought explanations and root causes. The hijackers, he asserted loudly and surely, are "African-Muslim" savages, and savages act savagely, QED. What else is there to discuss?

This extreme suspicion of analysis is yet another sign that conservatives have abandoned the intellect. Rejection of evidentiary argument and empirical reasoning are not just pathetic tendencies of the contemporary right, they're frankly dangerous, especially when embraced by men who actually wield power.

Higher brain function, apparently, is for durn lib'ruls. Pretty awful. Somewhere out there, Kirk and WFB must be projectile puking.

Inventing a(nother) Right

2009-04-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

Support for same-sex marriage rose during the 1990s but seems to have frozen in place (at least according to Gallup) since the high court of Massachusetts invented a right to same-sex marriage earlier this decade.

--The Editors @ NRO

So what? All rights are inventions, insomuch as they're imagined by men, drafted by men, tweaked and solidified by men, approved by men, protected by men. The "God given" rhetoric is just that -- rhetoric. No intelligent person can believe otherwise. If a supreme deity truly endowed us with rights, why'd it take millennia for them to be recognized? Why do they continue to be absent in most parts of the world? (And why the hell is God such a gun nut?)

Also, the fact that they're so culturally specific, so purely Anglo-Saxon, so obviously cobbled together through centuries of legal and military struggle -- these realities make clear that the rights we know and articulate through the Constitution are man made, not handed down from on high.

The freedoms we cherish weren't written in stone by lightning bolts, nor brought down from a mountain top by the founding fathers. They came from human brains and flowed from pens wielded by frail -- but confident -- hands. Manufacturing rights is an All-American industry. We've invented a bunch, now we can invent some more.

Ours is a system started and sustained by men. It can thus be altered by men, especially if the alteration jibes with the thrust of the larger project: the expansion of liberty and the insurance of equality before the law for all citizens.

Fact

2009-04-08T16:13:00.001-07:00

1900 was the first year that secular texts outnumbered religious ones in England.

That and other fascinating and revealing trivia bits can be found in From Dawn to Decadence, by Jacques Barzun, a strange but totally engrossing account of the 500 year "retreat" of Western culture. Barzun is at his best (and weirdest) in his analysis of contemporary culture, which he voluntarily treats with the sort of distance historians are forced to treat Rome or Assyria or even Prussia. The results, as you might expect, are interesting, if not always compelling.

It's now out in soft cover and reasonably priced for your recession budget.

The Anti-Partisan

2009-04-08T14:57:00.001-07:00

The first time I entered a ballot booth, I was surprised to learn you could vote a straight ticket simply by marking a single box. It seemed so . . . brainless, a sure sign of the decline in (collapse of?) Americans' civic literacy.

I’ve been of legal age for only a few elections, but I have yet to go down-the-line, and the enlightened section of my brain prays that I never will. In fact, my ballots have always been pretty mixed, with votes for Greens, Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans.

Recalling cast ballots, I realize that my policy/values checklist differs depending on the office for which a particular candidate is running. What I look for in a town councilman is different than what I look for in a president.

For close-to-home offices, I tend to support men of the alternative left (the Green Party, Working Families Party, etc.) with surprising frequency. For national offices, my conservative principles hold sway, and I typically support Republicans or Libertarians or Democrats in the right wing of their party.

Perhaps this is because I believe democracy works best when men know one another’s names, and I’m thus inclined to choose ardent power-to-the-people fist-jabbers for positions that effect the immediate polity. They seem most sensitive to the little injustices that bring down and divide a polity.

At the same time, I remain distrustful of leftists' centralizing impulse, and so regard their candidates for higher offices with great suspicion, favoring instead men and women who promote self-government (which enables the reformed minded progressives in municipal and state offices to better pursue rejuvinating policies and challenge entrenched local politics, which are notoriously clannish and work by nepotism and back scratching).

Eh, or maybe I’m just a walking contradiction, the classic example of Lippmann’s helplessly ideologically muddled voter.

Either way, I figure I'm definitely more mindful of my civic duty, my civic responsibility, than is a person who votes depending on the letter next to a name, no second guessing necessary -- or even allowed. It'd be nice if ballots could be scrubbed of the straight ticket option, though that probably wouldn't deter fierce partisans of voting R R R R R R or D D D D D D or whatever.

For the Record

2009-04-07T21:01:00.000-07:00

Just after I published the VT post, I realized something.

If that commenter pictures old Vermont as a conservative bastion, then what does that make the vast majority of pols and pundits praised on FR? Definitely not conservative!

Although VT stayed in the Republican fold for longer than is often remembered (well into the 90's), its conservative ideal was Calvin Coolidge, a man who, were he alive today, would be beaten out of the GOP, his back whipped with sticks.

Can you imagine Quiet Cal at CPAC? He’d be subject to every scheme and slur in the Rove playbook. Coulter would chortle and call him a fag. The NR editors would proclaim him a terrorist symp. He'd be proscribed, no question, a marked man like Ron Paul.

Maybe the Club for Growth fellas would warm to him, but certainly the moral stormtroopers would have his head for refusing the wield the federal apparatus as a Christian nanny. As for the neocons, well . . . let’s just say, rude caricatures bearing his resemblance would adorn every other cover of The Weekly Standard.

Coolidge would probably have more in common with fellow Vermonter Sanders than with three-quarters of the D.C. conservative establishment. At least Bernie the Pink knows that a right is right, not a privilege to be taken away at the convenience of the state.

As I said, Vermont has changed. But so has the Republican Party. So has ‘conservatism.’ What passes for it these days must have our thirtieth president spinning in his grave.

RIP, CC.

The Queer State

2009-04-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

Pam Spaulding, giggling, relays the howls of wingers who congregate at Free Republic, a cyberspace rat hole, a site that has made an art form out of the anonymous internet rant.

What are the cuckoos squawking about tonight? Homosexuals! (Surprise, surprise.)

Today, Vermont joined a small club of states in which same-sex marriage is legal. I'm not comfortable with the ends, but the means were satisfactory. Unlike in Iowa, this little cultural revolution was a democratic affair.

That legislative rather than judicial forces were at work in VT is little consolation to the Freepers. They are, each and every one, apoplectic. You can almost hear eyes popping out of sockets, skulls exploding, brain matter splattering onto keyboards and computer screens (even as their fingers keep furiously clicking away).

Despite the sound and the fury, the comments are rather boring, super predictable: Evil gays, crazy liberals, growl growl growl!

One line, however, caught my eye: "shame that VT was once the most conservative state in the union but it comes a time when those few conservatives left have to say , time to move out and move on"

This assertion—that Vermont used to be quite conservative and is now anything but—by a person you assume is a run-of-the-mill Limbaugh-Hannity-Savage partisan, illuminates the narrow thinking and intellectual laziness of movement types.

Yes, Vermont was long a conservative land, but its people harbored a 'conservative' sensibility that is alien to current right wing dogma. And, in many ways, the same sensibility endures, even flourishes.

The conservatism of the hill folk was not so much an ideology as a practical philosophy emphasizing the rights of the individual and the duties of citizenship. In that sense, it was tremendously democratic: Men expected to be treated with ample justice and dignity, to be afforded equality before the law; in exchange, they were expected to stand on their own two feet and lead sturdy, industrious lives.

Self-sufficiency enabled self-government. Liberty and a limited state allowed the individual room to maximize his skills and abilities as best he knew, thus giving rise to the very order that ensured the foundational liberties on which the whole arrangement was built.

Obviously, culture in the Green Mountains has changed over the years, thanks in no small part to the arrival of flatlanders and shuckers from southern New England and elsewhere. Still, Vermonters remain a quirky, hard to place bunch. They retain much of the old swamp Yankee temperament, a weird blend of ornery individualism and proud communitarianism resultant from a powerful sense of place.

In his revealing essay on Vermont, the always-fascinating Bill Kauffman tells of a country that is “green and truculent, little and rebellious.” I would add to that: Kind, cautious, conscious of the past, wary but not frightened of the future, deeply smitten by a notion depressingly rare in human history: That a person has rights, foremost among them the entitlement to lead the existence he wishes, so long as it is quiet and peaceful.

In permitting same-sex marriage, Vermonters have taken a huge leap into the unknown. It could turn out a serious miscalculation. Nonetheless, at heart their intention was merely to invite more citizens into the institution of marriage. And marriage, we know, is the most stabilizing (and thus conservative) force in all civilization. Seen in this light, SSM fits the once and future classical liberal sentiment to which the Freeper vaguely alluded.

Certainly, the Jesuits of the right wing do not accept such flavorful ‘conservatism,’ but my guess is that Burke and Kirk—and daresay Buckley—would recognize it. Recognize and savor.

Vermont is, to borrow again from Kauffman, a beautiful scrap of “pre-atom-bomb America,” a place where equality comes from love of liberty, tolerance from a sense of togetherness, and democracy is known as a verb, not a noun.

Soldiers of Misfortune

2009-04-07T14:06:00.000-07:00

The previous post got me thinking about defense industry contractors, specifically the U.S. military's growing reliance on the services of private, for-profit men-at-arms.

During the big debate about conscription in the 1970's, General Westmoreland declared that he didn't want to command an army of mercenaries. (Milton Friedman, in response, famously asked if he'd rather command an army of slaves -- hah!) The implication of the general's statement was that the spirit of the mercenary is totally at odds with the spirit of a republican soldiery, which should be composed of citizens fighting for home and hearth, risking life and limb out of a sense of patriotic duty. (Of course, the draft is equally anti-republican, though it's definitely democratic.)

How things have changed. Tens of thousands of mercenaries fought alongside our proper troops in Iraq, and it's hard to believe that soldiers of fortune won't play a significant role in future military endeavors.

It's a distressing phenomenon, a development that betrays a lot about the state of the American empire: How thoroughly militarized we've become; how thinly stretched our legions are.

Once, we relished the ideal of the "citizen-solider." Now, most people don't so much as bat a lash at the thought of privateers fighting under our flag, even as their antics cross moral and ethical boundaries here and there, here and there. (But perhaps that's the point exactly . . .)

A standing army of professional soldiers is bad enough. The emergence of a martial caste, with certain families giving generation after generation of sons to arms, is a problem for anyone who desires internal and external harmony. The public's acceptance of mercenaryism further complicates any hope for a relatively bloodless twenty-first century.

When conflict becomes a business, a nation's business becomes conflict. When mighty industries are built on war, only a fool will expect peace.

$$$

2009-04-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Robert Gates rolled out the "defense" budget today. Let's just say I didn't get my wish: The military will remain obscenely over-funded.

That said, Gates seems to have done some smart shuffling, emphasizing weapons systems that are practical in this age of asymmetrical warfare.

One thing I think I'm happy about is the move away from private contractors.

A final recommendation that will have a significant impact on how defense organizations are staffed and operated. Under this budget request, we will reduce the number of support service contractors from our current 39 percent of the workforce to the pre-2001 level of 26 percent and replace them with full-time government employees. Our goal is to hire as many as 13,000 new civil servants in FY10 to replace contractors and up to 30,000 new civil servants in place of contractors over the next five years.

At Slate, Robert Kagan translates:

Contracting is another area that Gates is seeking to reform. He wants to slash the corps of service contractors, who come from the defense industry, and to replace them with civil-service professionals, 13,000 of whom he wants to hire next year, expanding to 30,000 new officials over the next five years.

It's rare that I applaud the expansion of the federal work force, but anything that sands away the long, bloody fangs of the defense industry is fine by me. (I assume, maybe dumbly, that civil servants will have at heart the interest of the public, not the war profiteers.)

This is probably a worthwhile time to quote from an essay of mine that appeared at Antiwar.com a while ago, "Conservatives Must Oppose Militarism and War."

The military is the most bloated and opaque organization in the United States, perhaps in the world. Yet few conservatives criticize this shadowy arm of the state. Are these really the same people who would have us believe that they champion good, clean, simple government? The military is constantly excused, with accusations of treachery and disloyalty hurled at anyone who dares bring reproach. Exceptionalism is the name of the game: every other government agency is suspect, but the most reckless, dangerous, and expensive of them all is coddled and protected. This is the most juvenile and grotesque sort of patriotism.

Far Wrong

2009-04-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

"It's now very clear just what happened in Pittsburgh when Mark Poplawski killed three policemen. He was acting out of far right conspiracy theories, and was armed with an AK-47:

On March 13, according to the site, Mr. Poplawski wrote a lengthy post predicting economic collapse, engineered by a Jewish conspiracy. "The federal government, mainstream media, and banking system in these United States are strongly under the influence of -- if not completely controlled by -- Zionist interest," the post declares. "An economic collapse of the financial system is inevitable, bringing with it some degree of civil unrest if not outright balkanization of the continental US, civil/revolutionary/racial war . . . This collapse is likely engineered by the elite Jewish powers that be in order to make for a power and asset grab."

--Andrew Sullivan @ The Daily Dish

Sullivan never passes up a chance to bash the "far right." Never mind that Zionist conspiracies are the manna of the hard left. See: CounterPunch, etc.

Really, though, this sounds like the spittle-flecked gibberish of the LaRouche set, which may be reactionary, but is not of the right in any meangingful sense of that term.

Against Public School Derangement Syndrome

2009-04-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

Robert Stacy McCain bemoans the fact that many Christians condemn public schools while continuing to send their children to them.

For a guy who can’t go two minutes without reminding everyone what a Totally Ordinary Dude he is, McCain sure seems oblivious to the dilemma here: Alternatives to the public system are either expensive (private/religious institutions) or time consuming (home schooling).

Living idealistically is easy when you’ve fair chunks of time and money, but for tens of millions of Americans who're doubly strapped, concessions must be made. There is a thing called reality, and it must be lived in, for better or for worse (usually for worse). I’m sure they appreciate RSM’s reprimands, though.

In the same post, McCain blames America’s public schools—which are, like our government, free of the influence of any church—for the decline of religiosity in today’s youth. In a similar vein, he imagines the public school system as a sort of open cult dedicated to spreading the gospel of godlessness.

All I can say is, this gives teachers and administrators wayyy to much credit. And it puts awfully little emphasis on the individual, even the weakest of whom has a psyche that is fairly impermeable and influenced mainly by friends and family, not by teachers.

As I recall, the instructors of my youth were distant and underwhelming. Students had trouble listening to them when it came to pertinent course material—forget matters of the soul.

It’s hard to imagine anyone’s faith life was ruined by Mrs. Crane, the bony widow who spent all class facing the blackboard, or Mr. Wilson, who read the newspaper and drank coffee while we filled in maps of Europe, or . . .

The teachers and administrators at my school were a diverse lot. Some old, some young; some liberal, some conservative; some religious, some not. Most I couldn’t (still can't) peg as Republican or Democrat, Jew or Christian . . . because those subjects didn’t come up.

Most clearly just wanted to do their job: Get in, read from the teacher’s edition, get out. Shoddy instructors, sure, but hardly masters of propaganda. (Sadly, more than a few probably had no idea in hell what “secularism” even meant.)

Granted, religion was largely absent in the halls, but prayer groups were allowed before and after school, and anyway, the hours of 8 - 3 were reserved for math, science, history, English, art, gym, and foreign languages, not the Good Word. I'm pretty intelligent, pretty vigilant, pretty sensitive about my faith, and I rarely felt under the sway of godless meanies.

Plus, a lot of teachers and administrators I knew from elsewhere in the community (including church!). They were parents of friends and friends of parents; area folks who shopped on Main Street and walked their dogs in the park; local faces, not a gang of insidious strangers hell bent on undermining Christian civilization. They weren’t hive minded, certainly not masterminded.

Now, McCain is a sharp guy. Which is why it’s so hard to understand where this deranged knuckleheadedness is coming from. It’s equal parts ignorant, naïve, paranoid, and delusional.

What is it about public schools that sends otherwise rational people over the edge? These are, remember, the institutions responsible for producing one of the most thoroughly educated populations in history. The institutions that freed book learning from the clutches of the wealthy, making the 3 R's available to all citizens. Are they perfect? Hell no. There's work to be done, starting with breaking the teachers' unions, but to call them "Moloch" (as does some crazy in the featured YouTube) is asinine. And assclownish.

Could it be . . . memories of wedgies and swirlies and unrequited schoolboy crushes, maybe? Not the leonine RSM!

Electioneering

2009-04-06T07:41:00.000-07:00

[Governor Mark Sanford] also deviates from the Republican line on foreign policy. In Congress, he opposed Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo. And he was one of only two Republicans to vote against the 1998 resolution to make regime change in Iraq the official policy of the United States. He says that it was a “protest vote” in which he tried to reassert the legislature’s war-declaring powers. When asked about the invasion of Iraq, he extends his critique beyond the constitutional niceties. “I don’t believe in preemptive war,” he says flatly. “For us to hold the moral high ground in the world, our default position must be defensive.”

--Michael Brendan Dougherty @ The American Conservative

The day after North Korea decided to defy the world and test long-range ballistic missiles, Gov. Mark Sanford said the United States should have taken action to stop the rogue regime.

Speaking on FOX News Sunday, Sanford agreed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s plan to “take whatever preemptive actions are necessary,” including the use of electromagnetic pulse capabilities to destroy the missile before it left the launch pad.

--Adam Fogle @ Palmetto Scoop, in the depressingly-titled article "Sanford would have attacked North Korea"

"Is there something I’m missing here?"

--Will @ Ordinary Gentlemen

I don't know, Will, are you missing Sanford's obvious hunger for the GOP nomination in 2012?

Is there some sort of hidden clause in the Constitution that makes mindless bellicosity a requirement for holding the office of president? (Certainly, there exists a similar clause in the constitution of the Republican Party.)

For Whom the Camera Flashes

2009-04-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

In February, Stars and Stripes reported that "the Pentagon will allow news organizations to photograph the caskets of U.S. war dead" returning to this country. The move—green-lighted by Secretary Gates and presumably okayed by President Obama—altered an 18-year-old blanket ban on such coverage.

There is, however, a catch: Reporters are granted access only at the discretion of the family of the fallen. So, if the relatives of a dead service member are uncomfortable with media presence, then the blackout remains in effect.

Despite my great sympathy for those who survive men and women killed in the line of duty, I find this new rule troubling. In an open society, the public must be able -- must be forced! -- to witness the price of war, and thus journalists must have total freedom of documentation.

Americans have long been unwilling to honestly face what transpires on the front. That's partially why the total ban lasted so long—the public gave little protest. It's unsurprising. The populace, by and large, dreads a true realization of the conflicts' costs, because that would make some sort of action (be it antiwar or pro-veteran, whatever) a moral necessity. And folks are too busy maxing out their credit cards and trolling celebrity stalker sites to deal with such heavy business. It's safe to say that Jane and Joe would rather see candid shots of A-listers than KIA-listers.

Yet it is critical that people recognize the suffering that is endured by a slim slice of the country in order to maintain hegemony. Americans can no longer be afforded the luxury of self-imposed ignorance. Empire, like some ancient angry god, demands blood. Those languishing in its soft belly must no longer be insulated from this ugly reality.

Yes, military families will feel squeamish about strangers snapping away at flag-draped coffins in which rest the corpses of loved ones. But if Americans are to ever grasp—and ever alter—the horror of our bellicose foreign policy, then they must be made to feel equally squeamish. (This is precisely why the administration of W. Bush was so insistent on the ban.)

It is time the public bears witness to the human toll of our needless entanglements. Every single casket to enter this country cloaked in red, white, and blue should be a front page story (in the spirit of the vigilant hawk, not the sadistic vulture). As the old, mournful refrain goes, "Attention must be paid."

UPDATE: I mention this now because, earlier today, the body of an Air Force staff sergeant killed in Afghanistan arrived in Delaware. The family allowed the press to be there. Good for them.