Sage Advice from the Huffington Post

Please, please. please let this happen. Here are the highlights (emphasis added) followed by a few of my own observations:

*****

President Obama Should Embrace the Socialist Label
by Mark Joseph

Barack Obama is a Socialist and I can prove it.
...
[A]ny politician who is to the political Left of [Bernie] Sanders is by definition a Socialist and has earned the moniker. By that calculation, according to National Journal's 2007 poll of members of Congress there were four Socialists in the United States Senate that year: Sanders, Barack Obama, Joseph Biden and Sheldon Whitehouse.

What's so terrible about being a Socialist? It's a perfectly respectable political philosophy and the last time I checked it wasn't against the law or anything and Sanders seems to be doing just fine. So why do President Obama and his Republican critics act as though it's such a dirty word?

If Barack Obama wants to be a transformational President like Ronald Reagan, inspiring a new generation of Americans to believe as he does, he would be wise to own the label and change the public perception of it rather than running from it. And the President's Republican critics should get over their timidity and engage in the kind of full-throated public discourse that debates the issues on the merits and calls him what he, objectively, is.

As for the rest of us in the vast mainstream of American life who aren't blindly beholden to any political ideologies, we'll continue to be believe in a sort of hybrid of Socialism and Capitalism, celebrating a political and economic system that allows people to get rich even as we aggressively encourage the wealthy among us to give away much of that wealth to charities and churches in order to help the less fortunate among us all.

*****

Okay, this is just bizarre. Here are my thoughts:

1) Socialism is definitely NOT a "perfectly respectable political philosophy." It's a respectable personal or emotional inclination, but for anyone who has studied history, it is an abhorrent political philosophy. The distinction between personal inclination and political philosophy is very important. For instance, I think everyone should go to Church; that's not the same as thinking that the Church should run the government.

2) He says that Republicans should "get over their timidity and engage in the kind of full-throated public discourse that debates the issues on the merits and calls him what he, objectively, is." What planet has Mr. Joseph been on for the past two years that he thinks (a)conservatives haven't been calling Obama's policies socialist, and (b)this tactic will ever be treated by the Left or the Media as anything other than pure hate-speech?

3) The political and economic system we believe in that "allows people to get rich even as we aggressively encourage the wealthy among us to give away much of that wealth to charities and churches in order to help the less fortunate" is not "a sort of hybrid of Socialism and Capitalism." It's just Capitalism. It would only become Socialism if you replace the words "aggresively encourage" with the words "forcefully coerce under penalty of law," and change "charities and churches" to "government bureaucracy." No wonder this guy thinks Socialism isn't so bad...he obviously has no idea what it actually is.

MSNBC Smears the Pope

It's hard to be genuinely shocked by anything that MSNBC does anymore, but this was just unbelievable:

"NBC apologized today for an article on MSNBC’s website entitled, “Pope Describes Touching Boys: I Went Too Far.” The article that readers accessed after clicking on it actually had nothing to do with the pope."

I assume (or at least hope) that this was a simple case of failure to control the interns. But, either way, heads should roll.

Again, I'm not catholic, but Pope Benedict strikes me as a shining example of Christian faith and action.The New York Times's (and apparently MSNBC's) recent campaign against him is dishonest and sad.

Race and the Tea Party

Dylan Ratigan can frequently become unhinged, but he's remarkably reasonable (if still a bit misguided) in this clip. Unfortunately, he fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the Tea Party movement.

While people like Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin are very involved with the Tea Party, they are not "leaders" of it and have no power to bind it to any sort of organizational statement of purpose. This really illustrates how the Left has trouble thinking in individual, rather than collective terms. There is no central leadership of the Tea Party. There is no institutional charter or mission statement. It's simply a loose affiliation of individuals and regional groups that favor limited government.

A collective commitment to reject any sort of racist rhetoric among Tea Party attendees is a wonderful but impractical goal - to say nothing of it being totally unnecessary. Such a statement would be wholly inconsistent with the nature of the movement. Let me be extra clear about that: An organized, top-down statement of opposition to racist rhetoric would be antithetical to the structure of the Tea Party movement, even though entirely consistent with the movement's purpose.

It's sort of like asking the Anti-War movement to renounce any direct criticisms of American troops - it would be a commendable statement, but meaningless since no central body has the ability to enforce it in any way. It would be a presumptuous and purely symbolic statement from someone not authorized to make it.

It is interesting that Ratigan recognizes his own inability to commit MSNBC (a small, structured organization) to any kind of civility pledge, but expects Breitbart and other Tea Party "leaders" to be able to do so with their own massive and diffuse group. Huh?

The organizers and attendees at individual Tea Party rallies have an incentive to police their events for violations of civility, not only because they reject racism and loony conspiracy theories, but also to avoid providing fodder for ideological opponents who are constantly seeking to marginalize the movement. That's really all that they can do, and (anecdotally) they do an excellent job. That's why it's so frustrating to see all the dishonest reporting about the movement, and why Breitbart is right to keep pointing it out. The attendees and organizers have no control over unsubstantiated claims and unfair coverage.

A Promising Trend

h/t Veronique de Rugy at The Corner

It seems to me that the American education system started sucking when we began treating it like a Jobs program for adults, rather than as a system for, like, educating kids and stuff. The Department of Education should be scrapped entirely.

A Little Perspective

I linked to this old Boston Globe article in a previous post, but I think it's so revealing that I'm reproducing it here in full.

Compare the events described below to the current level of political invective among conservatives. How does it compare? Clearly, when it comes to violently inflammatory rhetoric, conservatives still have the training wheels on.

But I'm not posting this to point fingers at the Left. I'm posting it to make a point about the Media. Is it possible to read this and not conclude that the Media have been actively attempting to damage the public's perception of the political Right - or, at the very least, that their ideological bias has dramatically skewed their perception of recent events? I think not.

*****
A new low in Bush-hatred
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | September 10, 2006

SIX YEARS into the Bush administration, are there any new lows to which the Bush-haters can sink?

George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the "interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a "fraud" that Bush "cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another ( Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a "lying bastard," a "filth spewer," an "evil maniac," a "fuehrer," and a "terrorist" guilty of "blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.

What else can they say about Bush? That they want him killed?

They already say it.

On Air America, talk show host Randi Rhodes recommended doing to Bush what Michael Corleone, in "The Godfather, Part II," does to his brother. "Like Fredo," she said, "somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw!" -- then imitated the sound of a gunshot. In the Guardian, a leading British daily, columnist Charlie Brooker issued a plea: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?"

For the more literary Bush-hater, there is "Checkpoint," a novel by Nicholson Baker in which two characters discuss the wisdom of shooting the president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character fumes. Some Bush-hatred masquerades as art: At Chicago's Columbia College, a curated exhibit included a sheet of mock postage stamps bearing the words "Patriot Act" and depicting President Bush with a gun to his head. There are even Bush-assassination fashion statements, such as the "KILL BUSH" T-shirts that were on offer last year at CafePress, an online retailer.

Lurid political libels have a long history in American life. The lies told about John Adams in the campaign of 1800 were vile enough, his wife Abigail lamented, "to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world." But has there ever been a president so hated by his enemies that they lusted openly for his death? Or tried to gratify that lust with such political pornography?

As with other kinds of porn, even the most graphic expressions of Bush-hatred tend to jade those who gorge on it, so that they crave ever more explicit material to achieve the same effect.

Which brings us to "Death of a President," a new movie about the assassination of George W. Bush.

Written and directed by British filmmaker Gabriel Range, the movie premieres today at the Toronto Film Festival and will air next month on Britain's Channel 4. Shot in the style of a documentary, the movie opens with what looks like actual footage of Bush being gunned down by a sniper as he leaves a Chicago hotel in October 2007. Through the use of digital special effects, the film superimposes the president's face onto the body of the actor playing him, so that the mortally wounded man collapsing on the screen will seem, all too vividly, to be Bush himself.

This is Bush-hatred as a snuff film. The fantasies it feeds are grotesque and obscene; to pander to such fantasies is to rip at boundary-markers that are indispensable to civilized society. That such a movie could not only be made but lionized at an international film festival is a mark not of sophistication, but of a sickness in modern life that should alarm conservatives and liberals alike.

Naturally that's not how the film's promoters see it. Noah Cowan, one of the Toronto festival's codirectors, high-mindedly describes "Death of a President" as "a classic cautionary tale." Well, yes, Bush's assassination is "harrowing," he says, but what the film is really about is "how the Patriot Act, especially, and how Bush's divisive partisanship and race-baiting (!?!) has forever altered America."

I can't help wondering, though, whether some of those who see this film will take away rather a different message. John Hinckley, in his derangement, had the idea that shooting the president was the way to impress a movie star. After seeing "Death of a President," the next Hinckley may get a more grandiose idea: Shooting the president is the way to become a movie star.

Tony Blankley Clearly Calls for Violence!

Okay, the title of this post is a little misleading, but you'll see why. Tony Blankley has a very entertaining take on the recent liberal apoplexy. Here are my favorite parts:

*****
"The late, splendid Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once famously asserted, 'Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.' The senator was wrong. (Of course, for those of us who still believe that objectivity is objective, a fact is still a fact, though the heavens may fall.)
...
"The Democratic party collectively smeared scores of millions of American tea-party participants as racist, homophobic, violent terrorists in the absence of a single verified fact in support of even one such incident being attributable to a single individual. Nor did their media pals even bother with the word 'alleged.'
...
"Last week I quite upset more than 800 digital 'commenters' at the Huffington Post — and thousands of other friendly, if often obscene and contemptuous, e-mailers — because I used the word 'socialism' to describe a government-designed, -taxed, -regulated and -mandated program the enforcement of which will require 16,000 new IRS agents.

"We’re in for quite a brawl. Note to the Democratic party’s talking-points-drafting people: I am using the word 'brawl' as a metaphor. I am not calling for violence against your dainty selves, so you can come out from pretending to be trembling under your desks and bask in the physical safety of debating Republicans, conservatives, tea-party folks, and other fine Americans.
...
"Come out, come out, wherever you are, my little pretties. We want to debate the facts, not duck your mud balls. What are you afraid of? Admittedly, the truth may hurt you — but only metaphorically. And, as the phrase goes, the truth will set us, even you, free."

The Unfolding Kristallnacht

Along the same lines of my last post, Jonah Goldberg hits it out of the park yet again.

And in other under-reported news, Karl Rove couldn't speak or sign books at a scheduled book-signing event because some charming people showed up to give us all a lesson in civilized public discourse. Why are these people so afraid to let their opponents speak? Can they really be that insecure about the power of their own ideas?

Furthermore, if someone at a Tea Party rally or Townhall meeting had told a Democratic leader that they're going to "burn in hell," is there any doubt it would have been cited by the media as evidence that the Right is collectively out of control?

Business as Usual

The widespread effort by the Left and the compliant media to portray people on the Right as violent extremists is perhaps the most shameful political smear I've ever witnessed. Casual consumers of network news and popular culture would honestly believe that Conservatives are currently the great violators of civil discourse, which is patently ridiculous. And - this is an important point - that dishonest portrayal infuriates me much more than any health-care boondoggle or scheming politician ever could.

The fact is, the fervor on the right (even during the recent "small scale...Kristallnacht" - as Frank Rich so psychotically described it) doesn't even approximate the daily madness of the Left today, during the Bush years, or at any other point in recent American history. The difference, of course, is that this type of behavior is "business as usual" for the Left.

The Left has established a benchmark of uncivil behavior (or perhaps such behavior has always been more congruous with their worldview), and that benchmark is completely ignored by their ideological fellow travelers in the media. But when the Right, with a higher concentration of older and therefore generally more temperate citizens, suddenly realizes that they're being drowned out and decides to raise their own volume to match their ideological opponents, the mainstream media feigns shock.

What we're witnessing is the attempted marginalization of half of the American population through Aliskyite methods. And it is not the political Left that is the perpetrator, it is the media. It is their twisted wish-fulfillment, their disingenuous smearing - not the vociferous or even offensive expression of public opinion - that is threatening the long-term tranquility of our country.

Laura Ingraham said it very well in her smack-down of Matt Lauer on the Today Show. Yes, there are intemperate voices on both sides of the debate, but when the media only reports one side of the story, they throw fuel on the fire. That is what drives people crazy and destroys civil discourse.

America can handle offensive speech and opinionated people, but it cannot abide corrupt institutions - and the modern American media is corrupt to the core. Their behavior over the last week proves it.

Enemies of the Planet: People and Democracy

This is just too, too perfect. This guy must be Tom Friedman's favorite "scientist". I couldn't resist the urge to include some parenthetical editorial comments.

*****
James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change

Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected (!?!) environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory (Ah yes, the scientifically rigorous, intensely rational Gaia theory).
...

"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle [as] complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock (Note that, as is always the case with people who advocate authoritarianism, the speaker assumes that he is somehow immune from this deficiency of cleverness) in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."

One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while." (Oh, but just for a while. That's a foolproof plan if I've ever heard one. What could go wrong?)

The Future is Bright...

This is what happens when hospitals are run by the same people who run the DMV. But I suppose sacrifices have to be made to ensure that everyone has access to this kind of "quality" care.

Sobering Truth from Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn: "If the Commerce Clause can legitimize the 'individual mandate,' then there is no republic, not in any meaningful sense."

*****
In other words, if individual mandates imposed by the federal government are upheld by the Court, then the federal structure of U.S. government is functionally meaningless. The result will be the complete eradication of the spheres of autonomy "reserved to the states...or to the people" by the Constitution. The 10th Amendment will finally be reduced to a nullity and State governments will effectively become like the English monarchy - vestiges of a bygone era, comforting to the public but largely irrelevant to actual governance.

This is why Conservatives are more than a little irritated with the recently passed health-care bill. Because all the "crazy, right-wing scare tactics" claiming that Obamacare will fundamentally alter the role of government in American life will be proved absolutely, undeniably correct. That is, unless the Court steps in to prevent it.

Some analysts are fairly confident that could happen, but I'm predicting a 5-4 decision in favor of Obamacare - because the Court has the most to gain from passage of the bill. If the Court decides that the Commerce Clause can validate federal mandates, guess who gets to decide which mandates in particular are constitutional and which are not. That's right. The Court itself becomes the sole arbiter of social change, unrestrained by objective constitutional standards.

But this all sounds pretty cynical, right? Aren't judges checked by certain institutional limitations? Stare decisis and so forth? Surely our legal system (and, like, the text of the Constitution) would prevent them from redefining the limits of federal power willy-nilly?

I have my doubts.

First, Commerce Clause jurisprudence is the "wild, wild west" of stare decisis application. There is no objective test for activities that affect interstate commerce - the Court has free reign to decide, restrained only by their conscience and their imagination (see Wickard vs. Filburn). And secondly: many of the Justices, in spite of their exclusively legal training, consider themselves to be intellectuals. And intellectuals can't resist the urge to be in the vanguard for social experimentation. It makes them feel special, and like all professional intellectuals they pay a minimal price for being wrong.

The Individual Mandate Can-of-Worms

This is an interesting analysis. I can't really find any flaw with the legal reasoning here. The only response from proponents of the bill would be to say, "Oh, come on. Get serious. You're paranoid if you think the government would ever force you to buy a certain type of car. The people would never stand for it."

To which I would respond:
1) The constitution exists to make certain government action impossible - not merely politically impractical.
2) Twenty years ago we thought the same thing about individual health insurance mandates.

*****
Rep. Burgess: Government Can Force Us to Buy General Motors Products If Obamacare Mandate Upheld in Court

(CNSNews.com) – Representative Michael Burgess (R-Texas) told CNSNews.com that if the mandate in the health care law requiring individuals to purchase health insurance or be penalized is upheld by the courts, the federal government could mandate anything, such as requiring all Americans to purchase a General Motors car.

On Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked Representative Burgess, “The Congressional Budget Office has said that never before in the history of the United States has the federal government mandated that any one buy a specific good or service and, of course, the bill includes the individual mandate. Is there a part of the Constitution that you think gives Congress the authority to mandate individuals to purchase health insurance?”

Representative Burgess, himself a doctor, said, “No, I personally do not, and I think that is exactly right. Never before in the history of this country have we had the ability to coerce American citizens to purchase something and then invoke the Commerce clause after we coerce that purchase.”

100th Post

This is my 100th post. I'm using it to announce my 100th post.

Seems like cheating, doesn't it?

Hawaiian Rainbow

We were treated to this full double rainbow on the beach in Hawaii. The second rainbow doesn't show up very well in the video, but you can see it at the end, just outside the main rainbow.

It slowly moved in from the water until it was right on the beach where we had been sitting. It was amazing - the video doesn't do it justice. There are a couple of pictures of it on my facebook page.

The Lakoffian Tendency

I've written at length lately about the unfortunate habit among many liberals to explain conservative perspectives as the result of some fundamental moral or intellectual flaw. As it turns out, the folks over at National Review have a name for this approach: "the Lakoffian tendency".

This term references George Lakoff, the famous leftist linguist (why are all the "shining lights" of progressivism linguists? Chomsky, Lakoff, etc.) who first popularized the view that Conservatives can be divided "into two rough taxonomic categories: the small elite of evil geniuses who spend their days spinning sinister plots, and the masses of ignorant dupes who can be tricked into following them." (I'm quoting this article by Anthony Dick, not Lakoff himself.)

If one adopts this view, they would be suddenly freed to dismiss all Conservatives as "either evil or stupid — masters of sinister language manipulation, or hypnotized victims of it." The somewhat Alinsky-ish effect, which I think Lakoff clearly intended, has been to allow leftists to shun meaningful debate by assuring them that Conservative ideas and arguments can be totally ignored without sacrificing one's intellectual honesty.

Aside from being plainly untrue, the weakness of this approach as a political tool is clear: When the general public is more in line with a particular Conservative policy than with the "progressive" vision, those who accept Lakoff's view end up making the argument that the public is simply too stupid to know what's good for them. They even write books making those kinds of arguments.

To the perpetual surprise of some on the left, this sort of sheer condescension doesn't sit well with the American people - a fact observed by Andrew McCarthy here.

Quote of the Day

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force."
- George Washington

Mark Krikorian on Uncommon Knowledge

Just to get away from all the health-care nonsense for a little while, here's a very interesting discussion between Peter Robinson and Mark Krikorian on the fiscal considerations relating to immigration.

I was particularly impressed with Krikorian's answer to the following question:

"What is the argument that permits you in good conscience to prefer the well-being of the working poor in El Paso over the poor folks in Ciudad Juarez who want to move to El Paso?"

His answer: "It's called patriotism." That may sound like an inadequate answer, but Krikorian explains how it really is not. He uses the phrase "concentric circles of obligation" to explain a concept that most people, whether they admit it or not, inherently understand: That they are first obligated to their own family, then to their community, then to their country, and then to citizens of foreign countries.

That seems not only reasonable to me, but also an undeniable fact of the human experience.

Iraqi Press Pool

This is a picture of a press pool covering elections in Iraq. It strikes me as a pretty stunning vindication of Bush-era foreign policy (if not the execution of that policy). I wonder if Matt Damon and his ilk in Hollywood feel even a twinge of remorse when they see pictures like this.

Does This Seem Like Treason to Anyone Else?

This article should be required reading for everyone in the country.

Sickening.

Thoughts on a Coffee Shop Conversation

As I sat in a coffee shop last weekend I overheard (or rather, could not help but overhear) a man loudly explaining to his friend that there's no point trying to explain something complicated like health-care to "people who watch Fox" because "they're incapable of rational thought." This is not an unusual perspective. I have heard similar "criticisms" from Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Frank Rich, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and on and on.

For some reason, liberals have a terrible time crediting their ideological opponents with intelligence and morality (Note: For more of my thoughts on this, see the next post.). I think this is because it's easier to ignore certain views if you can convince yourself that the people who hold them are greedy, dishonest, stupid, irrational, or otherwise unworthy of serious consideration. For people who do this, their ideological opposites are always incurably afflicted with some inherent flaw that renders their perspectives invalid. It can never be the case that conservatives, acting altruistically, have simply reached a different conclusion about the appropriate course of action.

There are many legitimate (though misguided, in my opinion) criticisms of conservative thought: markets produce inequality and can reward unethical behavior; smaller government does less for people in need; individual liberty can be abused to harm others; traditional values ignore significant social changes, etc. Liberals would do well to focus on these sorts of arguments, and some do. But the many liberals who instead choose to denigrate opponents serve as evidence that conservatives are currently winning the war of ideas in America.

One might be tempted to argue, "Well, conservatives do the same thing. They characterize liberals unfairly." But I think this is generally untrue - or at least not true in the same way. Clearly, there will be instances where even the most fair-minded and well-intending person resorts to character arguments to score a cheap point, but conservative attacks on liberals - even by the most incendiary voices (Beck, Coulter, Hannity) - are generally attacks on their ideas: Liberals want to "socialize medicine", "redistribute wealth", "grow government", "raise taxes", etc. You can argue that these statements are untrue, but they're only effective as "attacks" because conservatives (and history) have convinced Americans that these are all bad ideas.

This is very different than saying that liberals are just basically immoral people, and it would be a waste of breath to talk with them. I know very few conservatives who think that's true, but I hear it said about conservatives by high-profile liberals on a fairly regular basis.

Even if people on the Left reject the claim that liberals rely on character attacks more often than conservatives, we should at least agree that both sides, to the extent that they do, are wrong in doing so.

The Catholic Perspective on Health-Care

Charles J. Chaput, the Archbishop of Denver, has a good article on health-care reform. I think it's important for people to read things like this to understand that those of us who oppose ObamaCare do so for moral reasons.

Conservatives often choose to explain their opposition to socialized medicine in economic terms, rather than normative ones - and with good reason. But it would be incredibly simplistic to assume that a person who favors frugality or individual responsibility over institutionalized charity is somehow less motivated by moral considerations.

The fact is that Conservatives favor small government, free markets, individual liberty and traditional values because they believe that those sorts of policies make the lives of all Americans better - including the poorest among us. The sooner liberals stop impugning the motives of others and begin engaging alternative ideas seriously, the sooner the political system in this country will cease to seem so "broken".

Here's an excerpt from Chaput's article:

"...[F]ew persons seriously oppose making adequate health services available for all Americans. But God, or the devil, is in the details—and by that measure, the current Senate version of health care reform is not merely defective, but also a dangerous mistake.

"The long, unpleasant and too often dishonest national health care debate is now in its last days. Its most painful feature has been those “Catholic” groups that by their eagerness for some kind of deal undercut the witness of the Catholic community and help advance a bad bill into a bad law. Their flawed judgment could now have damaging consequences for all of us.

"Do not be misled. The Senate version of health care reform currently being pushed ahead by congressional leaders and the White House—despite public resistance and numerous moral concerns—is bad law; and not simply bad, but dangerous. It does not deserve, nor does it have, the support of the Catholic bishops in our country, who speak for the believing Catholic community. In its current content, the Senate version of health care legislation is not “reform.” Catholics and other persons of good will concerned about the foundations of human dignity should oppose it."

Chief Justice Roberts on State of the Union Fiasco

Chief Justice Roberts has made some comments about President Obama's criticism of the Court at the State of the Union address.

While he defends the President's right to criticize the Court, he also says:

"On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum...The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

I totally agree, and said so here:

I have no problem with the President's remarks per se, I just have a problem with the setting. I'm a huge fan of free speech, but I'm also a fan of tactfulness. Obama's remarks put the Court in a very uncomfortable position. The Justices' dignity forced them to sit calmly and take the President's undignified (and provably false) attack. And not all of them succeeded in restraining themselves.

A Useful Idiot

Jonah Goldberg once again indulges his obsession with Thomas Friedman (an obsession that he openly admits). His fascination is based on Friedman's too-good-to-be-true perfection as a specimen of the "useful idiot" - a totalitarian sympathizer in a free western nation. It's amazing that such a view can exist in the modern world, but there Friedman stands, proud as a peacock and as convinced as ever of his own enlightenment.

I have included a lengthy passage from Goldberg's article below. While reading this, I was constantly reminded of Thomas Sowell's great works: A Conflict of Visions and The Vision of the Anointed. Friedman is the ideal poster-child for Sowell's "anointed," don't you think?

As you read it, keep in mind: Friedman isn't some lefty Glenn Beck - a populist iconoclast prone to hyperbole. No, no. He's supposed to be one of the Left's elite intellectuals - a man of practical ideas, and apparently a man with the ear of the President. That is a terrifying thought.

*****
Friedman Aflame
The Times columnist’s mind melts fact and reason into nonsense

JONAH GOLDBERG

...Friedman is of late very frustrated with America for its failure to do what he says it must. Last September, in one of many columns lamenting that China does things better than we do, he wrote: “Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.” He continues: “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks, but when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.”

Just to clarify, according to Friedman, America is a one-party democracy not because the Democrats control the White House, the House, and the Senate. No, no. The U.S. suffers under the yoke of one-party democracy because the Republicans refuse to be steamrolled by the Democrats. “Our one-party democracy is worse” than China’s one-party autocracy, he explains:

The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions.

So what are the advantages of China’s “enlightened” one-party autocracy? To borrow a phrase from Elvis, the autocrats take care of business, in a flash. In a chapter of The World Is Flat titled “China for a Day (But Not for Two)” Friedman rhapsodizes about the glories of China’s statism. And in 2005 he began a column with this avowedly tongue-in-cheek prayer:

Dear God in Heaven: Forgive me my sins, for I have been to China and I have had bad thoughts. Forgive me, Heavenly Father, for I have cast an envious eye on the authoritarian Chinese political system, where leaders can, and do, just order that problems be solved. . . . I cannot help but feel a tinge of jealousy at China’s ability to be serious about its problems and actually do things that are tough and require taking things away from people. Dear Lord, please accept my expression of remorse for harboring such feelings. Amen.

Among the myriad problems with this cutesy-wutesy-ootseyness is the simple fact that Friedman should actually be offering a sincere prayer for forgiveness of his Durantyesque sycophancy in behalf of a totalitarian regime with the blood of 65 million people on its hands. If he’d written a chapter called “Nazis for a Day,” this point would be more obvious to more people. But instead of contrition we get scores more columns gushing about how great China is for being able to get all of the policies right.

...His panic that America can’t get important things done while the mandarins of Red China fiat utopia intensifies as Obama’s New Progressive Era retreats into a sad and strange historical parenthesis.

One doesn’t have to read Dostoevsky to know this sort of thing is hardly new — the envy for authoritarian regimes that can force the wheel of history in the right direction; the contempt for the messiness of democracy; the conviction that all good things go together and that certain enlightened and visionary revolution­aries can apply their intellects to any problem, can pick the lock of History and start over at Year Zero. This all-consuming passion for a unified theory of everything and the indomitable conviction that you are right has consumed many a brilliant mind.

Friedman doesn’t want America to become a totalitarian country — at least not for more than 24 hours. Whenever he goes too far in that rhetorical direction he pulls back a few paragraphs later, but his to-be-sures about how America is still better become less convincing every time, more pro-forma and cutesy. He is possessed by his own prophecy, consumed by his clairvoyance about the One Right Way. Half-measures succumb to the mental furnace; the case for democratic deliberation cannot withstand the heat. Everything fuels the fire in Tom’s mind.

The Time It Never Rained

I just finished reading The Time It Never Rained by Elmer Kelton. It's one of the best works of modern literature I've ever read.

The main character, Charlie Flagg, is a west Texas rancher determined to survive an oppressive drought. Others around him are reluctantly accepting government aid and all that goes with it, but Charlie refuses to give up his fight. Some regard his decision as stubborn and foolish, while others think him courageous and noble. It's a story about the strength of a man's principles, and his refusal to compromise them - even at great personal cost. It is similar in many ways to the biblical story of Job, and like that story it is absolutely devastating and, at the same time, remarkably edifying.

The book's themes will definitely resonate most with traditional Americans, but even the left-leaning reader will appreciate its power as a work of fiction. The characters are real; they are both deeply good and deeply flawed. It certainly is not a "feel-good" book, but I recommend it for anyone - especially those looking for a story that hasn't been tainted by the cliched progressive themes that bog down most modern works.

Safe Zone Violation...on the Moon

I just watched a movie called "Moon" starring Sam Rockwell. It was interesting, well-made, and very sad at times - which is quite an accomplishment for a low-budget science fiction movie. Overall, it was one of the better films I've seen lately.

I was thinking all this just as the credits were about to roll. Then, for absolutely no reason, the very last line of the movie was a political cheap shot - totally unnecessary and irrelevant to the plot. It was jarringly out of place and, in my opinion, ruined the entire film. It was as though the director said "Okay, I've worked hard on this, and I'm going to reward myself by throwing in a line to make conservatives look like morons."

Ugh. What a shame.

McDonald vs. Chicago

Here's the full transcript of the oral argument of the Chicago gun control case. Can't see how the court would uphold this, especially after these arguments.

And here's a good summary from SCOTUSblog.

I have lots of thoughts on the arguments, but they're all legal and boring. Basically, the Court will decide that when the second Amendment says "the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," it means that the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Tricky.