Why Russia?

Daniel Larison seems to be stupefied about why anybody ought to be worried about Russia, particularly since Vladimir Putin became President. This one seems pretty simple to me, and it has a great deal to do with the changes in history about what constitutes a great nation.

First of all, let's recognize that in practical terms Russia is currently a basket case. It's a demographic nightmare, it's economy is a shambles, the criminal element is wildly out of control, there is no rule of law but there are rogue nuclear weapons. What's not to like? Moreover, in spite (or because of) these things, Putin, the Russian leadership and to a substantial extent the Russian people regard Russia as a Great Power, equal to or at least roughly of the same stature as the United States. This would be very funny if it were meant as a joke.

Instead, Russia intends to use its energy resources to bully other nations into adopting Moscow's line on the various controversies bouncing around world. Often, Moscow doesn't really care about the substance of its own line very much. But, by defending it aggressively and forcing other countries to come to heel, Moscow demonstrates its capacity to exercise power and preserves its amour-propre.

This would be a great strategy if we still lived in the 18th century. National powers were of necessity much more restrained. Theoretically a monarch might have absolute power but his real control over society was limited by logistics of enforcing it. Therefore the hunt for position and treasure among nations could be endured, because there was hope at the local level that the adverse consequences might miss them. Today of course, there is nowhere to hide from Big Brother.

Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin is still pretending to be the second coming of Napoleon. It ought to be the diplomatic policy of the United States to tell him that that game is stupid. If there were any point to that game, America would have won it a long time ago. America is the preeminent nation in the world today because it has shown that it can see the world through a bigger lens than its own parochial interest and can act on what it sees. The other nations of the world willingly give America its power. When it hits the fan and something needs to be done, people know who to as (hint: it's not France or Russia).

The latest on L'Affaire Beauchamp

Today has been a busy day. Jonathon Chait has published a cri de coeur on behalf of The New Republic, essentially reprising the "who are you to question my patriotism" gambit that worked so well for Mike Dukakis. Everybody and their brother has got their two cents in since, including Daniel Larison, Rich Lowry, Matt Feeney, Ross Douthat, Dean Barnett, and "Alenda Lux."

This last of these impressively and lengthily defends Kristol from the substance of Chait's gripes, but at this point really who cares? From the state of play right now, it's likely that most or all of Beauchamp's shocking assertions, published by TNR, will shown be unsubstantiated at best, plain lies or scandalously exaggerated at worst. It is a lead-pipe cinch that at the time of publication, TNR showed a jawdroppingly cavalier regard for their truth. Given the recent history of TNR's journalistic malfeasance, the only thing that matters now is the Howard Baker question: what did the TNR editorial authorities know, and when did they know it? The magnitude of fallout from this issue cannot be overstated. Journals of opinion like TNR are small niche publications. Questions of credibility and the purpose of the common editorial voice have to be answered. It wouldn't surpise me if TNR is eventually forced to cease publication as a result.

Let's also make one other point. The motivation for TNR to publish Beauchamp is actually pretty simple when you think about it. TNR is a political opinion periodical of the liberal/Left. It is not a carbon copy of The Nation, but broadly speaking it is clearly on the Left nonetheless. The support of the war by TNR has cost it dearly, in public credibility and personal relationships. Eventually, Peter Beinart bitterly repudiated the magazine's support for the war. Nonetheless, the memory of its prior support did not vanish. Publishing Beauchamp was an act of penance by TNR, toward their colleagues on the Left but most importantly toward its own insitutional sense of guilt for being on the wrong side of a momentous issue like Iraq.

Arsenal 1 - Blackburn 1

Today's game was a disappointment on several levels. First the result itself wasn't quite as bad as it could have been, now that all the top four have dropped points so far this season, and ManU have dropped a bunch. Nonetheless it was an opportunity missed to let the other guys chase us for a change.

In contrast where Arsenal have gotten poor results from domination in play, Blackburn were full value for the draw and were clearly the better side for the whole second half. That won't be such a big deal for one game but cannot be allowed to continue. The same with Lehmann's blunder. That's two for him so far this year, & three strikes you're out.

It was far more depressing that Arsenal were not able to show any resiliency or sense of urgency after Blackburn equalized. There was 20 minutes left, counting injury time. Maybe they should have scored a goal in that time, maybe not. But 20 minutes is more than enough time to assert superiority over a game if they have any superiority to assert. Their failure to do so was very very bad in my book.

Also, the signing of Eduardo da Silva has to be regarded as questionable at best. Not that we can regard him as a failure after one hour of competitive play, but it will be difficult to resolve his role on the team. He is a tweener of a young prospect and first-team contributor. We have several good prospects at the club already for his position. As an automatic selection, he has to be compared to Carlos Tevez, Nicolas Anelka, and Obafemi Martins, other strikers who played for lesser Premier League teams last year who may have been (or may be) available. Each of these other three are proven at the highest levels at club football, and are acclimated to the Premiership. In comparison to these three, it is very difficult to justify the signing of Eduardo.

Arsenal 2 - Fulham 1

There's a bunch of things that can be written about today's game, but the most important one is that Arsenal left the pitch with three points, and live to fight another day. The nature of the League has changed a little bit over the past few years: the teams at the top win more often than they used to, so draws are less and less useful.

It was a typical Arsenal effort in many ways: lots of chances but not so much scoring. But if there's anything positive to take from today, it looks to me like the team has a little better handle on how to quit dancing in possession and get a shot off. We can hope it's a good omen that the winning goal was by Sasha Hleb.

Big Billy and You

Please Mr. President, or whoever resurrects the next attempt at "comprehensive" immigration reform, get around this for a moment.

Btw, Rod Dreher linked to this as well. He believes the problem is largely irreformable because illegal immigration is behind so much of the prosperity behind our consumerist lifestyles to the point where we as a people can't afford to give it up. I have some sympathy with the underlying complaint but nonetheless it's a crock.

The owner of Big Billy's economically benefits very much from illegal immigration. You and I, probably not as much.

I pile on

The brouhaha over this has largely gone down the memory hole by now, but I can still point out that a substantial motivation behind the self-identification of today's "progressives" is the embarrassment of being associated with the 60s-70s connotations of being "liberal." In that context, it's worth pointing out that "progressivism" has it's own dirty laundry too.

I used to be an Anglophile

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWFmYzczYzA2ZjE1NjM1ODdhMjIzNmZlNTU3OWY2OGY=

I guess I still am in a way, but now it seems more a matter of nostalgia than real friendship and shared purpose.

Arsenal and the Premier League 2007-2008

I haven't written too much about this, but today was opening day for the Premiership, maybe the most exciting sports league on the world. There is enough quality to be motivated to follow the better teams, but also enough parity so that everyone knows that the big dogs don't get gimme wins against the also-rans. There's no playoffs, so all the title contenders' games are meaningful, kinda like baseball used to be before divisional play. The three teams at the bottom of the league are relegated out of the league.

My team, Arsenal, has finished a disappointing fourth for two straight seasons, the bottom of the "top-four" teams who legitimately consider themselves to be title contenders before the start of the season, and the lowest place to earn entry into the Champions League, the major continent-wide club competition. The manager, Frenchman Arsene Wenger is a revolutionary figure for opening the league up to skilled, relatively cheap foreign players. But he's been there ten years now, and his enormously successful first generation of recruited players have largely retired or moved on to other teams. He has replaced them with a bucketload of young talent, who in some cases have excelled individually but have yet to form an intimidating side.

Is this the year? I don't know, but I do think the question is a matter of character rather than skill or workrate. So many of the players have basked in the glow of being prodigies without ever being forced to feel the real sting of being blamed for failure.

One way or another we'll begin to see answers soon. Tomorrow Arsenal opens their season at home against Fulham, a team good enough to avoid relegation but no better. Again, due to the structure of the League, this game matters a lot more than you might expect. IMO, it's no exaggeration to consider this a must-win game on the first day of the season. One-nil to the Arsenal, or it's going to be a long, long year.

Army of Davids

When I was studying Polish at UCLA, I had to give a presentation on a topical journal article in Polish. The professor was a Polish native, but intellectually an exile from the political/religious mainstream there. The article I picked happened to push just about every one of his buttons. I didn't pick it to spite him, but by the time I figured out what the article said, I had put in too much work in it to change.

In any case, the subject of the article was the proposed EU constitution, and the author's point was that the refusal of the constitution's writers to acknowledge the Christian heritage of Europe in the preamble was discrimination against Poland as an EU member state. But more importantly, it was also an act of willful amnesia. Ie, without the historical significance of Christianity, the continent has no real basis for cultural unity. Furthermore, the Euro-elites were too afraid of Christianity as a challenge to their authority to allow even an insignificant mention of it in the preamble to the EU Constitution.

At the time, a classmate asked me if I agreed with the substance of the article. I said no, but I couldn't exactly say why, since my brain was frazzled from a whole weekend's worth of translation work. But now, in the middle of a lazy summer, it's easier to explain.

The Euro-elites establishment are empatically not afraid of a resurgence of Christianity as a threat to their power. What they are scared to death of is real popular sovereignty. The people are reactionary and fickle. That is why there are significant extra-governmental institutions (supranational courts, social charters, NGOs, etc.) that backstop the elected governments against real change or debate in the issues that can't be let out of the attic: immigration, anything dealing with homosexuality, anything dealing with race, anything dealing with the "right" to welfare, anything dealing with Islam.

Here in the United States we have, just barely, real popular sovereignty. Even when the establishment is united upon some course of action, the popular will can veto it, if it's willing to get off the couch long enough to mobilize. The failure of the most recent immigration bill is a prime example.

This is a substantial part of the reason why Europe (especially Old Europe), is fading into cultural insignificance relative to the United States, for at least two reasons. First of all, the message to the people living in these countries is, that when push comes to shove, they don't count. This message is internalized, and the citizenry of these countries are less prepared to handle the challenges that come up.

Second (and predicted by Hayek), the Euro-"elites" don't have enough information or talent to handle the dynamic modern world. In the United States, anybody can have a business, a blog, a cultural movement, or an independent net worth. These things exist largely outside of the control of the government or any other central authority for that matter. Therefore the American people have resources to adapt to problems as they occur, resources that aren't available in the rest of the world, especially to the governing classes.

I personally get defensive when I hear people trashing the American lumpenproletariat and its various nicknames (flyover country, Religious Right, red states, etc) even when the criticism is largely on point. The alternatives are much worse.

The Prince of Darkness

I'm in Los Angeles at the moment and on the way over (and a little bit since), I've been reading the memoirs of Robert Novak, one of the most interesting figures in Washington for the past several decades. The Prince of Darkness has lots of interesting minutae (Did you know Bob Novak is Chris Caldwell's father-in-law? Me either, though I'm sure it isn't any kind of state secret.) But the overall portrait of the author is most compelling.

First of all, to me Novak has come across as the paleoconservative who didn't fit. He agrees with them about most on most of the controversial things, but somehow it's difficult to see him taking the career track of E. Michael Jones or Joseph Sobran. The reason why is because Mr. Novak represents not the Eastern Establishment exactly, but the mainstream of the American press, and comfortable in it. He worked in the vineyards as a correspondent in Nebraska and Indiana before establishing his Capitol-based franchises. This is a far cry from the let's-return-to-the-soil tradition of the paleocons.

Second, there is distinct lack of sentimentality of warmth in his personality. This is especially apparent in his writing regarding his partnership with Rowly Evans, who always seemed to me to be a gregarious good egg when I saw him on television. In this way, I guess his reputation is well-deserved.

But in spite of this, I still have to commend Mr. Novak for his ability to tell a straight story, in my view the prime reason why he has had a successful career as he had. This extends even to his own failures of character. In one anecdote, he admits that he softpedaled James Baker as chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan as a silent quid pro quo for Mr. Baker ceasing to badmouth Novak in the President's name. It's the sort of thing that any profession person with a substantial career has done that he is not proud of. I give quite a bit of credit to Mr. Novak for owning up to it.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Larry Kudlow is a likeable guy, & I tend to agree with him in broad strokes (in fact, I agree with most of what he wrote in the link). But for some reason, establishment types tend to get very blinkered when they've made up their mind.

The decline and fall of Ted Stevens (if in fact it happens) is the best news the GOP has had in a while. Mr. Kudlow is confusing the disease with the cure. The Republicans have already suffered from the disease, they might as well enjoy the benefit of the cure, even if it hurts a little.

Ugh

Somehow, I'm pretty confident that FoxNews has more than enough journalistic integrity not to try something like this.

The Real Conservative is Whoever Agrees With Me

http://www.belgraviadispatch.com/2007/07/more_impeachment_talk_in_estab.html

Pray tell Greg, what exactly makes Bruce Fein a real conservative and say, Larry Thompson a closet socialist in sheep's clothing?

Hope Over Experience II

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2EwNDRjNDk2ZDIwY2I3YTM4YzNhMWFmZWFmYmU1YzQ=

Newt Gingrich recently spoke at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. He's a smart guy, and do better a lot of jobs than the guy who is doing it now. But President of the United States is not one of them, if for no other reason than he would self-destruct at least five times before taking the Oath of Office. As Geraghty writes, it's reasonably likely that he will run for President in '08, but the idea that he will succeed is again the triumph of hope over experience. On the other hand, it might help the rest of the GOP crowd if they have to battle against somebody with some game.

The Republican party is in bad shape, but it has the opportunity to right its ship quickly. The Democrats haven't sold the body politic on anything except for the fact that they're not the Republicans. But the most important thing the GOP will accomplish this election cycle has nothing to do with the D's. That is, as Newt says, the GOP will continue to be the major vehicle for center or right-wing political organization in the United States, and that it will escape the shadow of George W. Bush. Right now, restoring confidence in the GOP brand is more important than the Presidency or control of Congress. But if the Democrats going to return to the Greatest Hits of the 70s, they may get them too.

Hope Over Experience

Samuel Johnson famously suggested that second marriages were the triumph of hope over experience, and that's more or less my thought on William Kristol's glass-half-full appraisal of the Bush administration. That's not entirely meant to be facetious either. It is very important for the Right to keep hope in its political future, so as not to allow the appearance of misfortune to become reality.

Nonetheless, Kristol is ultimately not persuasive. First of all, the grand judgment of history is not going to care if W is succeeded by a Republican or a Democrat. If W's reputation is going to be better in posterity than it is now then his model will be Harry Truman, who was succeeded by Ike, not a Democrat.

More importantly, Kristol fails to appreciate that the failure of the Bush Administration is a function of character at least as much as policy. It's not so much that Bush has bad character, as that he has the wrong character. Bush is viewed, with substantial justification, of being clannish, insular, stubborn, complacent, and not too bright besides. He has bottomed out all the reserves of character that he had and it doesn't look like he has access to any more.

Under these circumstances, it is just about impossible for anyone to have a successful Presidency, not matter what policies the Administration pursues or what events intervene. Nobody feels that Bush is representing them in the world at large. Anything that succeeds has nothing to do with the President (or works in spite of him), whereas all failures are directly his. Bush could personally defeat the insurgency in Iraq bare-handed and then walk on water for an encore and he would still command our attention about as much as the adults in the Charlie Brown cartoons. It's not even so much that he has been rejected by America, he has just been tuned out instead.

Bush's Brain

http://markshea.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html#4328659249753612176

Mark Shea has more or less gone cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs over the Bush Administration, so it's a pleasure to link to something more measured, and perhaps not coincidentally that I agree with.

Centrism and the War

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2007/07/wipe-that-smile-offa-yore-face.html
http://larison.org/2007/07/13/centrism-rears-its-ugly-head-again/

Ok, most of the GOP Congresscritters still support the Prez with respect to the Iraq war, at least to the extent that they will vote for the appropriations that fund the troops. A significant minority of them, are looking to cut our losses, both the loss of American lives and treasure and the political support of the country at large for the Republican party.

These fence-straddlers aren't going to make anybody happy. It's not sufficient to pacify either Daniel Larison or Rod Dreher, as should be pretty clear if you read the links above. More importantly, it's not going to satisfy the GOP base either. The typcial Republican from Paducah is not particularly enamored of George W. Bush, but he also believes the point of the Iraq War is to win it. Not just to militarily defeat Saddam Hussein, but to leave the place in such a way that the overall US interest in the region is furthered rather than hurt. And this goes not just for the Republican base, but also for a fair number of independents and Democrats as well.

More importantly, these Senators and Congressmen are making a calculation that doesn't work. We as Republicans have, fairly, taken the blame for the failures of the Iraq War so far and we'll continue to suffer loss of support if things do not turn for the better. The idea that we can change course now is just not credible. The American public knows very well that GOP were, politically speaking, the enthusiastic energy behind the war and the D's were dragged along. This helped the Republicans in the past but it hurts them now. In any case, it's fixed star in the politcal constellation. If any GOP Senator wants to flip on the war, he has to be able to sell his case on principle, because the political expediency isn't really there, it's just an optical illusion.

Btw, this whole business of the ISG recommendations are part of the problem instead of the solution. Whenever official Washington wants to resolve a contentious issue, they try to farm the whole thing out to a "bipartisan" group of (supposedly) worthies. The Iraq Study Group is just about the Platonic archetype of such things. If someone, such as Senator Richard Lugar, wants to speak in his own voice against the surge or any other element of the War on Terror, great. The saber-rattling against such people by Hugh Hewitt and the likes strikes me as mostly empty threats. But he's an exception. The American people won't accept the attempt to defer responsibility away from Congress because there's nobody else that's big enough to take it.

So far, so good

A few days ago, I wrote that just defeating the immigration bill isn't good enough. The Republican's Lazarus act starts when we see some retribution for that bill having got as far as it did.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/10/mccain.staff.ap/index.html

These staffers might be missed, but Sen McCain won't be (when the inevitable happens).

Lenin makes the hajj

One of the most interesting below-radar phenomena of our day is the slow rotting of the secular hard Left and its assimilation into Islam. Wretchard from the Belmont Club made a couple of posts about this a few years ago, mostly in connection with the 1993 European Social Forum in Paris, a huge Leftist conference.

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/12/decline-and-fall-hat-tip-to-andrew.html

http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2003/09/islam-and-end-of-left-one-of-principal.html

Wretchard is mostly interested in the political and cultural consequences. He writes what purports to be a funeral oration for the secular Left. Because they lack the discipline and self-denial to see themselves through the hard times, they will never be an existential threat to Western Civilization instead, and will function only as adjunct to the struggle between the West and Islam.

I am more intested in the spiritual causes of this phenomenon, in the hearts and minds of the typical Leftist who makes this transition. The main premise is that the Left is essentially a rejection of bourgeois society and an expression of hatred against it. But, over the passage of time, all the Communist revolutions, the Howard Dean primal screams, all the enthusiasm for Fidel Castro and Che Guevara just fade away. They take a big bite out of the bourgeois of their time, of course, but they never establish the societies that justify all the energy and effort spent on their behalf.

Therefore, the aging Leftist is despondent and heartbroken. He hatred in his heart burns as strong as it ever did, but the optimism that he could build something different is gone. Therefore, he makes a religious turn. He allies himself with Islam, which from his perspective is the rejection of bourgeois society turned into a religion. He spiritually feeds himself with the solace of any religious believer, while at the same time nurturing his grudges against the world.

Of course, the original Leftist critique of bourgeois society is that it is too stifling, it insists on meaningless convention at the expense of individual autonomy. The Muslim critique of society is just the opposite. It is all license for perversion and blasphemy. But when push comes to shove, that can be papered over. With the turn to Islam the leftist can still keep his hatred of his neighbors, and that is what matters most.

Who was that masked man anyway?

The Lone Reformer, that is.

http://www.theamericanscene.com/2007/03/27/upper-middle-reform-and-lower-middle

A few months ago Reihan Salam formulated the idea of upper-middle (and lower-middle) reformism, something that was originally opaque for me. Now, I think I get his point a little better, but in substantial ways I just don't buy it. First, let's restrict ourselves to the GOP side for a moment, and consider this:

Why do Senators like Hagel, McCain, and Graham tend to end up on the same side of issues that seemingly don't have anything to do with each other, and that inevitably put them at odds with the prevailing thoughts of their party. I can think of at least four fairly prominent examples of this offhand: campaign finance reform, torture (us torturing the terrorists, that is), the judicial nomination filibuster deal, and immigration.

Reihan and Ross are correct to suppose that all of these things are related to each other, but I disagree with them to extent that it has anything to do with reform. They are just opinions which are largely shared by the members of the media, so they presented to the public in the most favorable light possible. But even after that, the public is still indifferent, or in the case of immigration reform, hostile.

They are closer when they claim that these "reforms" are intended to appeal to the upper-middle class. To borrow some medieval terms, it is true that these issues are intended to appeal to the squires and gentry against the base impulses of the serfs. But even that is more hope than reality: how many real estate developers, tax attorneys, or investment bankers really care about the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or the senatorial privilege to filibuster a judge? And in the case of campaign finance reform this theory is even less persuasive, because these are exactly the sorts of people whose influence was supposed to be taken down a notch or two by curtailing their ability to control the money flow into the political arena.

No, the primary driving force behind upper-middle reformism is the psychological profile of the Senators themselves. In particular, these Senators reject the idea of accountability to their constituents, and more importantly, to the Republican base. This is clearest in the case of McCain, but the motivation is substantially the same in several others as well (though probably not quite as strong), so let's recap.

Senator McCain is held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for several years, then returns to the US and gets elected Senator. He meets people like a nurse from Flagstaff, and he is a little surprised to learn that she has a list of positions he is expected to hold and is perfectly capable of granting or witholding her support depending on them. Then he gets in trouble for his association with the Keating Five (though he was regarded as the least culpable of the bunch), because he needed money to air television commercials, essentially for the sake of appeasing the likes of this nurse.

Enough is enough, he thinks, who is she to tell me what to do? This is especially topical in the case of McCain, because he regards (probably with some justification) that it is his sense of honor and ability to do the right thing even when it hurts is what allowed him to survive the Hanoi Hilton.

In the end it is a mistake, of course, to suppose that accountability to the body politic is a corruption instead of a duty. Mark Steyn once wrote of the McCain campaign that he hadn't seen more contempt for the common man since Pierre Trudeau. Well, that's why.

Shocked

In Casablanca, Captain Renault is "Shocked, Shocked!" to learn that gambling is taking place at Rick's American Cafe. In reality of course, that was probably the most famous ironic joke in the whole history of film. The whole world knew that there was gambling at Rick's, that what it was there for.

And such it is with politics. Everybody is sophisticated and world-weary. Everybody expects the backroom deals, the logrolling, the perk guarding. But despite all of this, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that some things truly are shocking. And the immigration bill currently before the Senate is one of them.

It's not especially shocking that the bill survived its first cloture attempt yesterday. For those who read the tea leaves for that particular episode, it was more or less expected. No, what's suprising for me is that that this bill, which is so singularly awful in so many unique ways, horribly unpopular with the people, just refuses to die. It was easier to kill Freddy Krueger.

A substantial number of commentators have claimed that this bill represents the death knell of the modern GOP coalition. To some extent, I take a contrarian view on that. President Bush will be out of office in a year and a half, and the Republicans need to do a great deal of repair work on their brand before the next Presidential election. This is the place to start. The President is hugely unpopular, and this is his least popular issue. If the Republicans can kill this bill, they can claim that they are the pro-security party, and open a great deal of common ground between themselves and the voters as a whole.

But still, my guess is the last chance for this GOP resurrection act is tomorrow. If the bill goes any further, there will be too many Republican fingerprints on it for that to be credible. And even if cloture does fail tomorrow, the anti-amnesty base of the party has to be able to exact some kind of retribution. The whole thing has gone too far to let the guilty get away scot-free. And what pompous blubbery targets they are as well: Voinovich, Graham, Trent Lott, McCain. If we can get some scalps, the GOP can recover its ability to credibly represent its prinicples to the American people.

Btw, I would have never guessed that I would ever feel sorry for Sen. Edward Kennedy. But I saw him for a few minutes on C-Span, and I pitied him nonetheless. He was old, rambling, distracted, incoherent. The passion would return to his bearing for a phrase or two and just as quickly go away. Such are the ravages of age I suppose. It's not that I want to kick him when he's down, but it's just amazing to me that the GOP Grand Bargaineers cut such a lousy deal when that's who was on the other side of the table.

Ron Paul

No one could be better-suited as an ideal candidate for Sullivan’s rhetorical pose as the Last of the Goldwaterites than Ron Paul, who is as genuinely libertarian and constitutionalist in reality as Sullivan pretends to be during one of his “fundamentalist”-induced panic attacks, yet you will not see someone like Sullivan (or anyone else in a similarly prominent position) lift a finger to advocate for Dr. Paul’s candidacy. Why? Because he is “not serious.” Of course, candidates can never be really “serious” until large numbers of people support them, so instead of complaining about Ron Paul’s candidacy antiwar, realist, small-government and constitutionalist conservatives might actually stop whining about how the movement and candidates have failed them and back the one person who has had the integrity and willingness to defend these positions when most of them were hiding or on the other side. - Daniel Larison

Daniel Larison has been working the Ron Paul candidacy as a hobbyhorse for a while now, unfortunately he also carries with it the typical "We wuz robbed" whingeing with it.

Truth be told, I don't think he'd neceesarily be that a President. If I had to make my own personal ranking with the Three Amigos leading in the polls, I'd put Romney first, then Paul, then McCain, then Rudy. But as Daniel knows yet still finds painful to acknowledge, the reason that his candidacy is languishing isn't because of lack of respect from the pundit class, but simpler than than. Nobody, proud or humble, supports him.

Note on fusionism

Fusionism is the idea that the Right in the United States is not a atomic entity, but essentially a coalition of groups of somewhat disparate motivation. In its original form, associated with former National Review editor Frank Meyer, there were three elements; anti-communists, economic conservatives, and traditionalists. This was essentially the coalition that elected Ronald Reagan some decades later, and carried the Republican party to majority or near-majority since.

Now with the Republican reverses in 2006 and dark outlook now, there is a great deal of speculation that the "fusionist" structure of the Republican coalition is going to be realigned, much of it plausible. The overall structure of our political culture is in greater flux now than I can ever recall, so it's very likely that certain things that have held together before will be shaken loose.

But when you look at the various sources of dissatisfaction on the contemporary right (paleocons, libertarians, crunchy cons, fiscally conservative green-eyeshade types), it's at least as likely to think that that traditionalist and economic conservatives should unite against the mainstream Republican establishment as it is to think that they should split apart.

This is ridiculous

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzgxMjNlMWMzNzQ1NjlhMWI5YzNiYTM5YzdmZDdiNTQ=

This piece is salutary in that the contemporary Republican party seems to want to reincarnate itself as Alfred E. Newman. Well they ought to worry, becuase they are in very real danger of being rendered into Tory-style irrelevance. It's very difficult to overemphasize the straits the GOP has wandered into.

Nonetheless Mr. Bartlett has done it. First of all, it is a very dubious proposition that Mrs. Clinton is any kind of conservative, even relative to the other Democratic Presidential contenders. It's very plausible that she will be elected President and if she is, we'll hope for the best, but let's get real. It's not just that Hillary has walked in the circles of the hard Left for the whole of her adult life. It's not just that she has essentially had no career outside of being a proconsul for the Nanny State, though those would be bad enough. But in addition to that, ever since the health care plan debacle, all of her political maneuvers have been very carefully orchestrated for political positioning without much if any regard for what she truly believes in. Frankly she has done this for so long I don't think she knows herself what she truly believes, even if she were willing to tell you.

It's also a trope of political parties that have fallen out of favor that they try to return to favor by embracing things that are even less popular than they are. In Mrs. Clinton's case, I wonder if Mr. Bartlett is aware that there's a fairly well-known poll out that says that something like 48% of the voters won't vote for her under any circumstances.

Finally, no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, the Republican priorities in the next election cycle are clear. Win the Presidency and/or Congress, and if that isn't possible then to rehabilitate the GOP brand. The GOP needs to put aside distractions and penny ante crap, and demonstrate independently of George W. Bush, what it's willing to go to the mattresses for. When push comes to shove, I suspect it's a pretty small list: low taxes, abortion (and judges), immigration, the War on Terror. Furthermore, all of these issues are more popular than the GOP right now (even Iraq), so the Republicans have nothing to lose by embracing them.

Things are bleak at the moment, but some perspective is in order. We have had a President Bush before, and Republican credibility was at a low end then too. But he left the scene, and the party recovered. The current President Bush has hurt the party a great deal. But the damage will won't be permanent, unless those of us who are left are unwilling to stand up for what we believe in. And if that is what happens, we can only blame ourselves.

Ramesh on Fred

"But a lot of conservatives have been telling themselves that Republicans lost the election because they were insufficiently committed to conservative orthodoxy: that if they had just eschewed pork and prescription-drug benefits, the voters would have been kinder to them. It is a comforting theory with almost no basis in fact." - Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh writes an interesting article on Fred, most of which I agree with. I might get back to it later, but I wanted to touch on this a little bit, becuase I am one of the conservatives who believes this, at least to the extent that the GOP could have mitigated some of the damage of last year's election and in any case would be in much better shape than they are right now. Not necessarily because the libertarian hordes would tip the balance over the GOP, but a series of more subtle reasons.

First of all, political parties are expected to represent certain established issues and groups of people. They are charged to defend those interests in the political process, they are charged to advocate for their issues in the conversation at large. But, the attention of the public square is a finite thing, and any one political party will only have a fraction of that even. Whatever constituencies the GOP represents, pro-lifers, tax cutters, gun owners, they were all being crowded out because, in the public mind, the Republican Congress was associated with Jack Abramoff and the Bridge To Nowhere.

Second, I think we underestimate the degree to which the political fates are determined by issues of character and personality rather than policy. You would think it wouldn't be the case in a society as celebrity-obsessed as ours, but nonetheless that's the way it seems to me. Especially in a comment such as Ramesh's above. In various circumstances, you can vote for a political figure that you disagree with, or that you don't like. But it is very difficult to support someone you have contempt for. And the GOP's sins of corruption and mismanagement of the public purse has earned them a substantial measure of contempt that will be very difficult to erase.

Finally, there's a third reason that's sort of halfway between the first two. Politics is not just determined by the erstwhile personal relationship between the politicians and the voters, but also by the personal relationships among the voters themselves. Every political movement depends on the people at the grass roots level to advocate for it. And not necessarily in an organized way either, but also between friends over beer or as acquaintances sharing a bus ride. An accountant in Wichita might feel in his gut that the Republican party is the best hope for America, but if the political class is Washington is completely unaccountable, he won't be able to communicate that to his neighbor, and the other team wins by default.

Maybe we can call him Paleocon Demigod instead

"For the past few months, while he has virtually been crowned Antiwar Republican Demigod by certain enthusiasts, I have complained that Chuck Hagel said a lot of promising-sounding things but never actually did anything."
- Daniel Larison

Now you tell us

http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070425-110212-8486r.htm

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback said yesterday he no longer supports the immigration overhaul bill that he helped pass in the Senate.
"I would not vote for the same bill," Mr. Brownback told reporters yesterday morning, saying that after the bill passed the Senate he had a chance to study its effects and decided it led to too much immigration.

Better late than never I suppose, but why now? It's not like the problems of the current immigration regime were some big secret last year. (Hat tip to Derb)

Starving the Beast

Back to the thing about the carbon tax. Daniel is correct to think that politically speaking, the strategy is a little dated. Reflexive opposition to taxes has been a staple of GOP popularity since Reagan. But in Reagan's case, even if he didn't kill the welfare state or even seriously wound it, it was clear that regarding gov't spending, he was part of the solution instead of part of the problem. President Bush fils obviously has no such credibility, and the Republicans in Congress are no better and in some cases worse. So now we are in the unfortunate situation where the disconnect between spending and taxes is putting pressure on taxes instead of spending. But even here, to the extent that the GOP base gets a word in, it's better to keep the Norquist tax pledges and work harder to cut spending.

But why, really, can't the GOP take a "responsible" attitude toward funding the nation's public needs? It's a special case a simple reality of politics, something I plan to post more about later: big ticket issues, like the fraction of the national economy that the government is going to take for its own purposes, are never settled by horse trading. Instead, there are always a series of deals and modifications that reflect an underlying modus vivendi.

As it applies to taxes, there is very likely to be a disconnect between the collection of the tax and purpose that the tax is collected for. The money is taken away from the private economy forever (and is likely to continue to be taken away indefinitely) , but the ostensible benefits of the taxes may never come. It's famous talking point among tax protestors that one of the lines on your phone bill is a special tax to fund the Spanish-American War (ie, the one fought in 1898) which persisted for a century through the force of inertia (I think it was one of the Bush tax cuts that finally got rid of that one, though I'm not completely sure about that).

People are not going to care a whole lot about a nickel and dime item like that, but they will care very much about a gas tax, or any variant of it. It is a plausible thing to ask the American people for a collective sacrifice for a common good like environmental improvement or energy independence. But we should ask, are these goods real, or just a rationalization for the federal government to expand its power at the expense of individual Americans?

Wow, just wow

Hat tip to Steve Sailer for this. Like everybody else, there is very little that really shocks me anymore, and Ms. Giovanni's poem would be no exception but for the chilling juxtaposition.

Economic populism

Another angle on Daniel's post: I don't buy that economic populism, conventionally understood, is very popular. If you don't believe me, you can just ask President Pat Buchanan, President Harkin, and President Gephardt.

I do think that economic anxiety is very high. But the set of people who take seriously the proposition that it would be fixed if we could just put a 40% tariff on all Korean televisions is just about less than epsilon, and getting smaller every day. Because global capitalism is such a dynamic thing, it is getting more and more difficult to build a personal franchise strong enough to guarantee economic security through all the turbulence in the world at large. Therefore, even the temporarily affluent feel the anxiety because most of whatever it is they have can go away a lot quicker than it used to.

Viewed in this light, the carbon tax is a two-way loser. For the old-school truck-driving populists, the carbon tax is bad because it hurts their consumption. But for the New Economy bobos, the carbon tax hurts their production. For them, (and for the economy in general) energy is largely a capital good. Like anyother capital good, its cost can (and will) be substituted or passed on to the consumer. But before then, it will also increase the anxiety of those whose ability to make a living is put in jeopardy.

Carbon tax

Daniel Larison and Matthew Yglesias are interested in why GOP and its pundits are not in favor of some kind of energy consumption-based taxes. Larison's post in particuar touched on several things, but the immediate politics of this are fairly simple. There are essentially three reasons why one might be in favor of enacting an energy tax.

1. To raise revenue for the federal gov't.

For the GOP, this is actually a negative. The amount of revenue to be raised wouldn't significantly help solve the government's fiscal problems, and it creates a moral hazard for the gov't to enrich itself at the expense of individual Americans (or families). This would be mitigated if the gov't (or hypothetical GOP pundits) could show that the revenue generated would finance some end that widely-agreed upon and widely-distributed benefit. In practice, these things tend not to work. In particular, the tie-in to the income tax doesn't seem plausible to me. The Democratic party (and the Left in general) is not in a position to offer any kind of substantial tax relief because they will have to keep tax rates high in order to keep from cutting benefit levels in the various social welfare programs as such programs are about to go on a demographic swan dive. On a more emotional level, the Left hates tax cuts and they just bitterly earned a legislative majority.

2. To help the environment.

Given the track record of doomsday predictions by environmentalists, any Republican who went for this ought to be sued for malpractice. Among other things, there's a dirty little secret that those propping the conventional wisdom of global warming don't like to talk about. That is, if one accepts the pessimistic view of global warming, the draconian "solutions" (Kyoto, energy taxes) don't solve anything.

3. To provide energy independence from the Middle East and other politically unsavory places.

This is legit, but would probably be oversold to the voters.

In Yglesias' case, I think he might be misreading the political landscape as well. The tree-hugger types have spent so much energy hating on the Republicans, I don't think a carbon tax is enough to turn the GOP into a green brand. And even if it did, I still don't think it would be enough toflip the support of bobo-Liberals anyway.

Sneak Previews

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkzMTZlNzQ2MWZjNzQyNDAyNjQxMWZhMDNjZGFmOTI=

In a brief note regarding the French Presidential election, Stanley Kurtz touches on the demographic angle. France, like most other European countries, is caught between declining birth rates and and burdensome entitlements characteristic of the modern welfare state. This is fairly well known.

However, there is a related phenomenon that ought to be getting more attention that it is. France is suffering the incremental corruption, not just of the political leaders, but of the culture at large. So even when the leadership (or the even voters) want real reform, the body politic is so degraded that they can't get it.

The demographic situation in the developed world is difficult but not necessarily irreparable. As Kurtz' source points out, even though the population is getting older, it is still healthy. Furthermore, over the decades, the nature of work has changed to where we as workers are still capable later in life. With smart reforms in entitlements, workforce adaptations toward the productivity of formerly-retirees, and the ingenuity of the individual, the developed world still has a fighting chance. But can the French pull it off? The field of battle runs through the heart of M. Beaucheron and his retirement benefits.

This is part of the reason why, jingoism aside, America truly is the best hope for the world as we know it. For the real big-ticket items, demographics, engagement with Islam, energy, America is in objectively better shape than the other developed nations. But at least important as that, America still has the spiritual strength to believe in fixing its problems whereas the rest of the world is largely resigned to fate.

McCain redux

I was just as surprised as Daniel Larison that George Allen failed in his reelection campaign for US Senator from Virginia, at least partially due to gaffes caught on YouTube. So maybe I'm not the one to ask either, but I'll commit a few words to pixels as well.

First of all, Daniel is quite correct that GOP primary voters oppose jihad, either Shiite or Sunni, and want to avoid appeasing it if at all possible. (This is pretty basic so far, but it seems to exasperate Daniel.) From here, Daniel reasons that the GOP primary will be a posturing contest over who can out-macho the next guy on the War on Terror, or Iran in particular.

On that score, I have to part company. Just because no one is in the market for Chuck Hagel-style anklebiting, doesn't mean the GOP base can be bought off like the AARP holding out for bigger COLAs for Social Security. The issue doesn't frame that way. Support for the War on Terror will be a plus for the candidate who can show the voters that he is tough and smart. Anything that sounds like bluster will be filtered out, unless it's too provocative, in which case it will work as a negative.

Btw, who are these voters who "think that Mr. Bush has generally done a bang-up job all around?" I don't know of any.

Back to McCain. It is true, I would guess, that those who support McCain do so because of his steadfastness on the War. But as far as getting the nomination goes (or even seriously threatening for it), I don't think it will help much. This race, especially with the presence of President Bush dominating the background, will come down to persons and personalities and who can rescue the value of Brand Republican from the bear market of the last two years.

John McCain is not the guy. He's too old, not necessarily chronologically, but whereas before he presented himself as mavericky, now he's just crotchety. And all his policy apostasies (campaign finance reform, immigration, etc.) might be forgiven except for this: he has spent the better part of a decade hating on mainstream conservatives, and they haven't forgotten.

In which I defend people other than Jonah Goldberg

I suspect this whole business is coming to an end quite soon, but before it does, I wanted to revisit the Alterman/Larison thesis from the beginning, apart from our consideration of Jonah Goldberg. Simply put, the whole thing is a crock.

After a moment's reflection, I thought of Paul Johnson, Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels), Thos. Sowell, Michael Fumento, Roger Kimball, David Gelernter, George Gilder, and the late Milton Friedman for starters. These are prominent public intellectuals associated in some way with the mainstream Right (or in Friedman's case very recently so), not directly involved with politics or the Bush Administration, not directly involved with the neocon/paleocon thing or other intramural battles on the Right, and cordial to but not intimately involved with National Review or the mainstream conservative media. I'm sure others could supply other examples.

The idea that Eric Alterman is somehow above all these people is ridiculous of course, but frankly I don't think anybody expects anything from him. The idea that Daniel Larison agrees with him is not a credit to him, or at the very least was written in the flush of anger without much deliberation.

I will choose free will

"Sure, there’s a tendency among some of us, myself included, to look askance on even those traditional conservatives who continue to treat Lincoln as something other than a tyrant and even less patience for those who may now think that the New Deal was worth the trade-off of killing what little remained of the Constitution (not that these folks would acknowledge that this was the trade-off), but considering what we’re talking about paleos are quite restrained and mild in their annoyance with these folks." - Daniel Larison

Like my hero Jonah, I'm going to make a serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been advanced in such detail before. That is, I'm going to color in some of the dialog from the prior posts with a demonstration that the paleocon failure (and several other things besides) is at bottom an oblique denial of free will.

All of us realize, whether we state it this way are not, that sometimes other people's actions are contingent, and sometimes they are just facts of nature. That is we, want to imagine that another person could choose between more than one course of action (presumably between things we prefer and things we don't), and that we can mentally put ourselves in that person's place and advocate for one choice or another based on the perceived consequences. But, only some of the time.

The direct impact of any one person's actions is very small. Everything meaningful he accomplishes is necessarily filtered through other people's actions. Therefore, we want to be able to take some credit or assume some fiat power over other people's actions. But, total fiat is just as meaningless as none at all. First of all, one person's mind cannot handle the complexity of total fiat over everybody in the world. Second, analysis of human affairs reduces to triviality, eg, there is no reason to persuade President Bush to avoid war in Iraq when we could just as easily have said that Saddam Hussein should relinquish his claims to leadership there.

Taking these as boundaries, how do we tell the difference? How do we designate an action for which we should consider other possibilities versus some other action that is just part of objective reality? Frankly that's a subject that people should think about a great deal more than they do. But a big part of the answer is that we can legitimately consider alternative actions in circumstances where we have some sort of personal connection to the actor.

My favorite example of this is the pyramids of Egypt vs. your choice of breakfast cereal this morning. The reader knows, with the memory of standing in front of the kitchen cupboard, that he could have picked Froot Loops instead of Frosted Flakes. But the product of thousands of sweating slaves is just part of the landscape, like a canyon or a mountain. (Btw, if Daniel is still following, Joe Sobran makes a similar point in one of his favorite metaphors: the scene in Chinatown where Jack Nicholoson's nostril is cut is memorable not because of the amount of violence but because we identify so strongly with his character.)

From here, there are two important premises to having a sufficient personal connection to appreciate the contingency of someone else's action. First, it takes a fair amount of plain effort, and second, it means that the other party also gets to evaluate you. Let's leave that second one aside for the moment but the first is very important. Part of the effort into making a connection with another person is the willingness to accept the other person's frame of the world: his perceptions, his intentions, his constraints.

If for some reason you are unwilling to make that effort, you can't justifiably pretend to act on that person's behalf. It's as though that other person is a plastic figure who will move at our whim. (Btw, forgive the the earlier reference to Ken and Barbie, I should have explained it better.) All people have God's gift of free will, especially our antagonists.

Sticking up for Jonah

Really Daniel, I'm quite prepared to believe that Jonah displays any number of faults (or least idiosyncracies that we might not approve of), but we wouldn't know it from the examples you cite. About Lindbergh, he pretty clearly argues that he's not trying to tar Yglesias with Lindbergh, but instead attempting to at least partially rehabilitate Lindbergh.

About Rod, I have to say that Crunchy Cons is just a really awful book, precisely because Rod hints at a very real, very important phenomenon, and then says virtually nothing useful or interesting about it. Frankly whatever Jonah's point about the sacralization of politics is supposed to mean, it's giving Rod more credit than he's due. For Rod to assert boboish fashion and food choices as a sources of spiritual renewal (and I do think that's a fair description of his work) is just as bad as anything he criticizes in the book. In fact, it was following the whole Crunchy Con thing while it was hot gave me a renewed appreciation for mainstream American conservatives, for having to endure anklebiting from the likes of Rod.

In which I defend Jonah Goldberg

http://larison.org/2007/04/12/so-sorry/

Besides my other general point about paleocons, the other thing I wanted to mention wrt Daniel's response to me is that, at least in this case, he's wrong on the merits.

StarTrek in-jokes notwithstanding, Jonah does fairly engage people who disagree with him. And in fact he was doing so in the very post Daniel complains about. I have no particular beef with most of Reihan's analysis, but I've got no idea what "lower-middle reformism" and "upper-middle reformism" are supposed to mean. Suffice to say, they are not terms in wide circulation. Whatever it is, coining a neologism gives the impression that it's describing an inherent phenomenon as opposed to a very temporary alignment of some small part of the American body politic. And that's essentially what Jonah wrote, and he was well within his rights to do it.

If Daniel wants to look for lack of engagement in the contemporary Right, Derbyshire is a much better example. Even in his case, I don't think it's malicious as opposed a recognition on his part that he doesn't have the time or interest to settle every last jot and tittle. He succinctly states his case in two or three go-rounds, and if people still want to disagree after that, so be it. If you really want his attention, you've got to be able to converse intelligently about the Four-Color Theorem or the depravity of Long Island home-improvement contractors.

The problem with paleos

"Koz says that “being paleo means never having to say you’re sorry,” which I might be inclined to spin as a compliment meaning that paleos never have anything for which they should be sorry. But obviously that is not his meaning. It means that paleos should feel bad that they keep more or less accurately pointing out the grievous dangers to this country long before these evils become obvious to everyone else, while no one pays any attention to the paleos and instead listens to the impressive frauds who continue to bungle everything and fail their country on a regular basis. Daniel Larison

No, It's actually simpler than that. It means that for an intellectual movement like paleonconservatism (or even for individuals in some circumstances), it's not sufficient to be right. We are not judged just on what we think, but also what we do, and paleoconservatism has done very little. I'm sympathetic to paleos in other ways, but in on this score we must judge them harshly.

The paleo v. mainstream conservative battle has been going on for a while, though the Bush Administration has exacerbated it a great deal. The paleos have a long list of complaints against mainstream conservatives, neoconservatives, and the world in general for that matter. Some of these complaints were justified, but most of them have been forgotten by everybody except the paleos. All of their pissing matches and refusals to compromise bear a real cost, and this is theirs. A tree that falls in an empy forest doesn't make a noise.

President Fred

While reading Daniel Larison's response to another post of mine, I chased a few links and saw this:

http://larison.org/2007/03/12/carruthers-for-president-in-08-and-other-absurdities/

Enough time has passed since he wrote it that it's not completely fair for me to criticize it, since I have the benefit of a month's worth of hindsight. But leaving that aside, I will anyway.

In fact, I'll see Tom Bevan's third and raise him: if Fred Thompson gets into the race, he'll soon thereafter be the frontrunner and, I'm guessing, have a surprisingly easy path to winning the nomination. Why is this?

http://flyingspit.blogspot.com/2007/04/primaries-101.html

I'm glad you asked. Like I wrote yesterday, there's three criteria that GOP voters, if they're smart, have to have to nominate a Presidential candidate. He has to be on the right side on the half-dozen or so dealbreaker issues, he has to be a plausible demographic representative of Republican voters, and he has to have the right temperment and character for the job.

As it looks right now, Fred is the only game in town for the GOP.

The labyrinth

As I have been attempting to continue my study of the Polish language, I have come to the belated realization that in an odd way my textbook represents a microcosm of Poland. When I at college studying Polish last year, the professor assigned us a textbook "W labiryncie" based on the Polish soap opera of the same name from the late 1980's, episodes of which are used to complement the book. I have continued to use them for my independent study.

It's sort of like the Polish version of Dynasty or Dallas. It has more or less the same issues of bourgeois intrigue writ large: infidelity, the status game at the workplace, the battle between the cohesiveness of a family and outside adversity, the things that will move a woman's attention, and so on. But, compared to the American epics, the glam quotient is dialed down from 11 to 2.5, say. There's a drabness quality to everything we see, like cars or laboratories and the production values are very poor. But as important as those things are, the real drama doesn't depend upon them.

The kids are alright

http://larison.org/2007/04/11/shtick-is-far-too-kind/

Daniel Larison is a thoughtful, paleocon-ish graduate student at the University of Chicago. I suspect I will be riffing off his work more often to the extent that I update this meager blog.

In any case, he seems to agree with Eric Alterman that Jonah Goldberg is all shtick and no real thought. This is an example of an interesting phenomenon we've seen with interesting regularity recently: a meeting of the minds between the paleoconservatives and the Left.

Most often, of course, this is the fruit of shared opposition to the War and the supposed vulgarity of the Bush Administration. But today's topic nicely illustrates the peculiarities of each position: the professional Leftist Alterman can't see the humanity of those associated with the Right because of the bitterness and life-choking stranglehold of ideology inherent in today's Leftist politics. Whereas Larison imputes Goldberg's thoughts as necessarily vapid, swimming in the mainstream of American culture as they are.

This last is a paleocon trope that I wish more of them could see for themselves, since the paleocons often have very useful cultural commentary, but no accountability for any of it. Being a paleo means never having to say you're sorry. If they had been in charge, the problem (whatever problem it is) would have never happened in the first place. This is good as far as it goes, but it means that we have to retreat into our own personal little Barbie and Ken dollhouse where we have total fiat over our environment.

The whole shtick business that Alterman and Larison criticize Jonah for is especially unfortunate, #1 because it's an obvious genetic fallacy, and #2, because Jonah uses it a lot less than he used to. Not to say that he can't be wrong about this or that, but it's a little unfair to say that Jonah is an empty head while offering little if any substance yourself.

Primaries 101

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzU0YzhhODY3OWNhNjMxNjZiZDhkOGMyMmRhMGViMDc=

Dear Andy,

Giuliani is joke.

Your pal,
Koz

By now, the whole world knows that Rudy has had two or three really bad weeks, mostly having to do with abortion. He was never a pro-lifer, but he recently stated he favors public funding of abortion, and that does not support the Hyde Amendment (which bans public funding), but only would not actively work to repeal it. Well, that was obviously a nonstarter, so he has since backtracked. Exactly where we think he stands now, frankly I can't be bothered to find out.

Aside from abortion, Rudy is still a terrible candidate. Most of his supporters, like Andy McCarthy above, are myopic enthusiasts about one particular aspect of being President, and really never consider the totality of the job, and the campaigns required to get it. So to fully appreciate the wretchedness of the hypothetical Giuliani nomination, we have to have a little primer on Presidential candidates in general. Basically, you have to have all of three things:

1. He has to have the "right" policies or issue stances, both for the party he represents and for the country as a hole.

2. He has to demographically represent his party.

3. He has to have a good temperment for all aspects of the role.

The GOP is in a pickle right now because none of their declared candidates satisfy these basic, "have-to-have" criteria. But Guiliani is the worst of the lot, he independently flunks all three.

Besides abortion and gay rights, he's bad on immigration, he has no particular credibility on taxes, and he has no appeal to anyone with enthusiasm for limited government. This last point is flying under radar at the moment, but is very important nonetheless. A lot of Americans, not just tinfoil leftists complaining about HalliBushCo, are nervous about the unchecked growth of Leviathan in the era of the War on Terror, and Giuliani will not assuage their fears.

Demographically speaking Rudy doesn't represent New York (which would be bad enough), he's a real New Yorker. People who vote Republican in Presidential elections don't identify with New Yorkers.

Finally, Rudy is also a general jerk besides. It says a lot, that by 9/11, New Yorkers themselves had had quite enough of him, notwithstanding the fact that he is almost universally credited with saving the city. And working the Presidential campaign trail is like being in a boxing ring with Joe Louis, "You can run but you can't hide." He will be found out.

Greeley-Neuhaus Thesis

Contemporary Catholicism in the United States is a cultural moving target. Any institution of seventy-some million souls is obviously going to contain within it a lot of internal diversity, but the Church is almost unique in holding together polar opposites, harmoniously or otherwise. It is both liberal and conservative, regal and humble, beautiful and also mind-numbingly banal.

This polarity within Church in the United States has several intertwined aspects, and it just occurred to me recently that they are personified by two of its prominent priests, Rev. Andrew Greeley and Rev. Richard John Neuhaus.

On one hand, Fr. Greeley represents the Church of immigrants, the Church of small neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves, the Church as a cultural bulwark protecting and speaking for its members in the culture at large, and the Church of the Left. Fr. Neuhaus represents the opposite in every particular, the Church of the cosmopolitan and urbane, the Church of converts, the church of doctrines, and the Church of the Right.

I don't know if there's necessarily any reason why such things have to be associated together in this way, but as it happens they are in the U.S., and that has some interesting consequences that are otherwise inexplicable. One of them being the unease, sometimes spoken and sometimes not, felt by a substantial number of those who earn their livelihood in chanceries or Catholic universities, over the fact that Catholics in the US have been trending Republican for the a couple of decades now. In short, these people essentially reject the GOP for having cooties.

Catholics have increasingly tended to support the Right in domestic politics because the ties binding them the Democratic Party have gotten progressively weaker, and because the Right has successfully appealed to many Catholics as the political home for Catholic values. But even as the Catholic ghettos have long since disappeared from our major cities, the ghetto mentality has remained in the minds of many Catholic intellectuals.

Home of the brave

As a redblooded patriotic American, I don't want to let too much time pass since my last post, since I fear it might give a negative impression of the USA, and enough other people are playing that game already.

It is true, I believe, that foreigners in general (and Poles in particular) are "tougher" than Americans. But the flip side of that coin is that America works harder than the rest of the world. This is something that I don't think most Americans themselves appreciate. No one necessarily states the case directly, but the underlying train of thought is that all the attention spent on Anna Nicole Smith's autopsy or American Idol has turned us into lazy couch potatoes. But it's just not so, as anyone who has worked in Europe for a significant period of time will tell you.

This has very interesting spiritual causes and consequences. Because of our affluence and autonomy, a typical American's aspirations for success are real and legitimate. Not all of them become reality of course, but in general they are not delusions or pipe dreams. In fact this is a significant part of our inculturation as Americans. Our culture believes in the possibility of success because so many of us as individuals believe it. And, we as individuals believe it because we live in a culture that's suffused with that belief.

That last part is so important because most of the impact is below the conscious level. It's not that we recite a creed of homage to the Donald Trump or Tony Robbins every day. Instead, over the long haul we as Americans tend find useful and productive ways to go about our business instead of wasting our energy complaining that the deck of life is stacked against us. For those of you sweating through 10 hours a day in Dilbert-style cubicle land, you should know that no matter how it looks from the inside, you are likely working harder and smarter than your counterparties overseas.

This is a substantial reason why America has the role in the world that it does. Whenever a new or previously unseen problem occurs, a person essentially has two choices. He can either avoid the problem, pretend it really isn't there, or he can concentrate his energy toward it. The ability to concentrate energy toward the problem is a substantial spiritual resource, and we as Americans are blessed to have more than our share of it. As I read history, WWII was the last major worldwide crisis that most of the civilized world mobilized together to solve a common problem. Since then, the so-called "developed" nations have largely gone in the tank while America has done its best to sort out the big ticket issues by itself. The struggle against Communism, the stagflation and sclerotic taxes of the 70s, the reform of the welfare state, all of these things fit this pattern.

And now we're in Iraq, which has of course been interpreted a thousand different ways. But perhaps the most important one is to realize that America, in fits and starts and with plenty of mistakes along the way, is rising to the challenge of engaging the Islamic world.

Why Poland, pt. 2

Well, a few months ago, I returned to Chicago to take another trading job, and my study of Polish has suffered somewhat, though I am still perservering. I have already tried to answer this once on the blog, and I stand by what I wrote:

http://flyingspit.blogspot.com/2005/11/why-poland.html

But this is still incomplete. It only dealt with big-picture issues and sheds very little light on what an American visiting Poland is likely to see.

It is worth noting that my trips to Poland are strictly as a tourist. I am something of an enthusiast of Polish culture, but my name notwithstanding, I know very well that I am not Polish. So my interest in Poland is not about blood and roots.

Instead, Poles (like many foreigners) are in some way tougher than us. We all know that in America, the rough edges of life have been smoothed away by a combination an affluent economy and the nanny state. But this post is not intended to be some "Woe are they" tearjerker either, just the opposite in fact. It's really about the fact that people endure all sorts of privation with just a minimum of complaining, and without allowing it to interfere with completing their daily business. You might be tempted to think that this is because they don't know any better, they haven't been exposed to anything different. But that's not so. Poland exists in largely the same cultural orbit that we do, and travel has been liberalized for some time.

This is not intended to be some generic celebration of multiculturalism or the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Poles are very much "like" us, except that in some ways they have more resources than us, and in others they have less.

Whiter Mitt?

Because of the uncertain legacy of George W. Bush (and lack of a sitting VP as an active candidate), the GOP Presidential race is more up for grabs now that I can ever recall it having been. And one wildcard in this deck is Mitt Romney. Mitt is a legit candidate, but he has two real strikes against him. First of course, he's a Mormon, which is a legitimate issue and a negative. Second, which hasn't been emphasized enough, is that he's from Massachusetts. Politicians from the BayState, especially Presidential candidates, always seem to lack an appreciation of the nature of political reality in the rest of the country. Put them together, and in a normal year Mitt would be a goner.

But this is not a normal year, so he stays in the picture. McCain is in the middle of imploding. He's been around enough so that he's not fresh and mavericky anymore. Plus, he has no real strengths. I don't expect him to be a contender by the time Iowa rolls around.

Here's the thing that people aren't realizing. Rudy is also a weak candidate. His support is a mile wide and an inch deep. So far all we've heard about is the conservative base of the party coming around to the thought that he might be acceptable in spite of his stands on abortion or gay rights or whatever. What we haven't heard yet is that his supposed strength, the War on Terror and security issues, is not all it's cracked up to be.

It's all the result of his leadership of New York City post 9/11. Inspiring as that was, it has very little if anything to do with the challenges of the US wrt to Islam or jihadism or anything else, and we don't have any idea how he would handle them. All we have left is that Rudy is a general tough guy, and that's just not enough. Counterintuitive as it may seem, I think Mitt is the frontrunner right now.

And here's another loop. To be successful, I think he needs to run from the center or the left. Or to put it better, he needs to run toward his previous apostasies on abortion, etc, instead of trying to hide them. Ie, "I used to think that the difficulties of an unwanted pregnancy justified the choice of termination, but now we know blah blah..." This way, he can hold to conservative positions on social issues without appearing to be at the service of the Religious Right. If he can pull this off, this puts some northeastern states back in play for the general election while still holding the GOP base.

Finally Mitt needs to get his ass to Iowa and compete there, he might even win. With his odd sort of background, he's going to do best at the retail level, and Iowa is retail. Without a successful showing in Iowa, anything he does in New Hampshire will get discounted a little bit because he's from a neighboring state.

The Great White Defendant

Tom Wolfe invented the theory of the Great White Defendant in his novel Bonfire of the Vanities about twenty years ago. The point being, that prosecutors feel the singe of conscience for enforcing the laws against minority groups, that on the rare occasion when they do get a privileged white defendant in their sight, they pursue him like Ahab going after the whale.

Well today, in the person of Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney, the Great White Defendant was convicted. The case, and its entire associated cultural environment, was a traveshamockery. The impetus of the case was the leak that Valerie Plame, wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson, was in the employ of the CIA.

As it happens, the leak was not a crime, nor was Libby the leaker. He was convicted on very technical charges of "lying" to a grand jury regarding really irrelevant arcana. I write "lying" because the case against him was essentially based on the compelled testimony of a few reporters against him, whose testimony he was not successfully able to impeach, at least partially because of adverse rulings from the trial judge.

But who cares? As this episode quickly fades into history, the Left will quickly forget all the details of the case (intentionally so, in fact) to emphasize that the Libby was convicted of four out of five felony counts. They, and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald got their man. Everything else is details, and tedious details at that.