From Steve Sailer's blog:

Fukuyama Responds to Krauthammer: The Israelization of American Foreign Policy.

You may recall that prominent neocon Francis "End of History" Fukuyama jumped ship awhile ago and criticized Charles Krauthammer in The National Interest for his lack of realism about the Iraq War. Krauthammer responded, predictably, by playing the anti-Semitism card. Here is part of Fukuyama's rebuttal:
 
"Krauthammer says I have a "novel way of Judaizing neoconservatism", and that my argument is a more "implicit and subtle" version of things said by Pat Buchanan and Mahathir Mohamad. Since he thinks the latter two are anti-Semites, he is clearly implying that I am one as well. If he really thinks this is so, he should say that openly."
 
A little late, perhaps, Francis? "First they came for Pat Buchanan, but I was not Pat Buchanan, so I said nothing. Then they came ...". But better late than never. Fukuyama continues:

"What I said in my critique of [Krauthammer's] speech was, of course, quite different. I said that there was a very coherent set of strategic ideas that have come out of Israel's experience dealing with the Arabs and the world community, having to do with threat perception, preemption, the relative balance of carrots and sticks to be used in dealing with the Arabs, the United Nations, and the like. Anyone who has dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict understands these ideas, and many people (myself included) believe that they were well suited to Israel's actual situation. You do not have to he Jewish to understand or adopt these ideas as your own, which is why people like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld share them. And it is not so hard to understand how one's experience of Arab-Israeli politics can come to color one's broader view of the world: The 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution deeply discredited the UN, in the eyes of Jews and non-Jews alike, on issues having nothing to do with the Middle East. This is not about Judaism; it is about ideas. It would be quite disingenuous of Charles Krauthammer to assert that his view of how Israel needs to deal with the Arabs (that is, the testicular route to hearts and minds) has no impact on the way he thinks the United States should deal with them. And it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether this is the best way for the United States to proceed."
 
Well said. America's foreign policy blunders of the last 30 months have less to do with the fact that so many highly influential people in Washington and New York, like Krauthammer, think about Israel and its welfare all the time, as to the fact that it has become extremely dangerous to one's career to point out that they do. As Gene Expression blogged:
 
And I'm sorry, but ethnicity will and should legitimately be a topic brought up in the ensuing debate. Consider an analogy. Suppose that Wolfowitz, Perle, Shulsky, Feith, Ledeen, and all the rest were South Asian Americans rather than Jewish Americans and had names like Ramachandran, Patel, and Choudhury. Again they'd be selected from a highly educated group that was less than 2% of society (there are about 2 to 3 million South Asian Americans, about 1/2 to 1/3 the number of American Jews depending on how you count).

Now suppose they were pushing the US to invade Pakistan, and talking about how the Islamic terrorists killing Indian citizens in Kashmir were the same ones bombing the US on 9/11. Assume that they did this whilst having relatives, extended families, and significant contacts in India.

Now, their arguments would not - and should not - be dismissed out of hand. After all, it is probably more accurate to say that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the ISI are/were more closely involved in Muslim terrorism in Kashmir than they are with anti-Israeli terrorism in Palestine. (As far as I know, Al Qaeda has never directly attacked Israel.)

But while their arguments would not be dismissed out of hand, clearly their visible ethnicity would figure into the debate. Plenty of people would take their opinions with a grain of salt, knowing that humans tend to be ethnocentric on the population level if not the individual level. It would be scurrilous to dismiss their arguments simply because they were of Indian ancestry, especially if they were born in America. But it would be foolish to think their ethnicity wasn't impacting any of their arguments, and to rule out mention of their ethnicity as "anti-Subcontinental."
 
What we need, now more than ever, is free discussion. Closed discussion helped get us into Iraq.

From washingtonpost.com: Outside of Jenkins' comment about greenhouse gases, there's little to argue with here. Sad to see a once proud, once entertaining sport come to this.

Indifference Maker
By Sally Jenkins

Saturday, February 5, 2005

There must be something to say about the National Hockey League -- but I can't think of a thing. Where the NHL should be in my consciousness, there is instead a blank. A giant neutral zone of I-could-care-less-ness. If the season is canceled, it will just be substituting a vacancy for void. It should be canceled forever.

I'm sure I should be more upset about the precarious state of the NHL, and what the loss of the season means for the future of the league. I'm just sure I should be. But so many other things seem more interesting and important. SpongeBob's proclivities. Climate change and greenhouse gases. Whether Martha Stewart can stay clean when she gets out, or whether she becomes another recidivism statistic. Hillary Clinton's flu symptoms, and the comeback of electric football also occupy my mind more than hockey lately.

How can you miss something that wasn't really there in the first place, and hadn't been since about 1999?

Watching the impasse between Commissioner Gary Bettman and players' association executive director Bob Goodenow is about as much fun as watching your average midseason NHL game. Except a labor negotiation might draw better TV ratings.

Bettman and Goodenow continue to muck around over salary caps, luxury taxes and internal audits. Players offered a 24-percent rollback in salaries in their last proposal, but owners insist that's not good enough and that they've lost over $1.8 billion in the last 10 years. Owners claim 74 percent of the league's revenues go toward players' salaries, but the players claim owners hide income. Who's right?

Who cares?

Frankly, it's irrelevant. What neither side seems to recognize is that nobody misses them. What we're seeing is a mass abandonment of hockey as a spectator sport. There are too many teams, and the season is interminable and cluttered at 1,230 games. Since Wayne Gretzky retired in '99, the game has degenerated to wrestling on skates, and brawling has replaced strategy. Tell the sporting public that the NHL may be the first major sport in North America to wipe out an entire season -- that for the first time since a flu epidemic in 1919, a Stanley Cup champion might not be crowned -- and it shrugs and flips to a poker tournament.

In 142 days of the lockout, a total of 775 games have not been played. And you know what? The life of the average American sports fan has not been shattered -- in fact, the hockey audience has found other things that it likes better.

So whether the NHL knows it or not, the relevant numbers aren't on the negotiating table. These are the relevant numbers:

• Replacement programming on ESPN2, a jumble of poker, reruns and log rolling, is averaging twice the ratings of the NHL. Arena Football earns better ratings than the NHL these days. So does WNBA basketball.

• A CNN/USA Today Gallup poll found that 50 percent of people surveyed said they wouldn't be disappointed if the season was canceled. Only 12 percent said they would be "very disappointed."

• The NHL Fans Association cites a survey of 177 male "regular NHL viewers" that found the men, suddenly with time on their hands, are turning to the Internet (51 percent), or spending more time with their families (32 percent) or just puttering around the house (25 percent). Fifteen percent have turned to other sports. Here is a bad sign: Just eight percent of respondents said they are watching other hockey programming. In other words, their interest in the game is tenuous.

The NHL had a big audience problem even before the lockout -- TV ratings in the United States were the lowest in years. The league just signed a two-year bargain basement deal with NBC that's believed to be worth only about half as much as its previous $600 million contract with ABC. The NHL also signed a one-year deal with ESPN. Both networks have options for the future. But given the washout of this season, combined with profound lack of audience interest, what are the chances they will want to re-up at even those cheap rates?

More likely, the networks will significantly reduce their coverage -- or drop the league altogether.

The supreme irony of the lockout is that both sides are negotiating over revenue that could very well be nonexistent. What the owners and players have failed to realize is that all of their in-fighting is over other people's money, money that is not theirs but the customers'. It's money from ticket buyers and TV viewers, and it simply may not be there any more. They forgot one small but crucial point: People don't have to go to NHL games. It's a choice.

The league made its choice, negligence of the audience, followed by a lockout. The audience has made its choice: indifference.

From Tuesday's LA Times. This was given short shrift by the rest of the MSM:

GOP Sees a Future in Black Churches

Social issues are binding the party with a group once firmly in the Democratic camp.
By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten

February 1, 2005

WASHINGTON — Black conservatives who supported President Bush in 2004 and gained new prominence within the Republican Party are launching a loosely knit movement that they hope will transform the role African Americans play in national politics.

The effort will be visible today at the Crenshaw Christian Center, one of Los Angeles' biggest black churches, headed by televangelist Frederick K.C. Price. More than 100 African American ministers are to gather in the first of several regional summits to build support for banning same-sex marriage — a signature issue that drew socially conservative blacks to the Republican column last year.
Before the meeting, one prominent minister plans to unveil a "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," a call for Bible-based action by government and churches to promote conservative priorities. It is patterned loosely on the "Contract With America" that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich used 10 years ago to inaugurate an era of GOP dominance in Congress.

A separate group with ties to Gingrich will announce a similar "Mayflower Compact for Black America" later this month in Washington, which includes plans to organize in key states ahead of the 2006 and 2008 elections. And at the end of the month, the Heritage Foundation will cosponsor a gathering of black conservatives in Washington designed to counter dominance of the "America-hating black liberal leadership" and to focus African American voters on moral issues.

Those events all enjoy support from the Republican Party and its allies in the philanthropic and religious worlds. The meetings have a common goal: to foster a political realignment that, if successful, would challenge the Democrats' decades-long lock on the loyalty of black voters.

The effort has proved so successful already that Democrats who make up the Congressional Black Caucus are quietly expressing alarm — and planning countermeasures.

"I am frightened by what is happening," said Rep. Major R. Owens, an 11-term Democratic congressman from New York who has been conferring with colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus. "Our party is in grave danger. This Republican movement is going to expand exponentially unless we do something."

In the last seven presidential elections, the GOP's share of the black vote ranged from 8% to 11% nationwide.

But by courting conservative blacks in battleground states — reaching out through programs such as the president's faith-based initiative — GOP organizers believe they made the difference that secured Bush's victory in 2004. In Ohio, for instance, a concerted effort increased black support for Bush from 9% in 2000 to 16% in 2004, providing a cushion that allowed the president to win the pivotal state outright on election night. The Black Contract With America will be unveiled by Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., a registered Democrat from suburban Washington who backed Bush in 2004 after voting against him four years earlier. He was drawn, he said, to the GOP's social conservatism that he thought reflected the true values of black churches.

In addition to such conservative GOP priorities as allowing workers to create private Social Security accounts and banning same-sex marriage, the Jackson contract deals with some potentially dicey issues for Republicans — such as restoring rights to former felons. The contract, Jackson said, combines the Bible-based elements of the traditionally Republican and Democratic platforms.

"We crafted this based on the issues that are workable within the current Republican administration," Jackson said. "We're dealing with folks that we now have some access to."

Jackson's enthusiasm for working with Washington's Republican power structure is shared by the party's leading strategists. Today's Los Angeles meeting is sponsored in part by the Traditional Values Coalition, headed by the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, a white evangelical Christian with close ties to White House political strategist Karl Rove, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and other senior Bush administration officials.

Mehlman said Monday that he was in close contact with the organizers of each group and was coordinating with Gingrich and other party leaders.

"It may not be 1,000 flowers, but they're blooming all over the place," Mehlman said of the various efforts. "I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity for the party to build on what we've done over the past couple of years to improve our performance in the African American community."

Last week, about two dozen black civic and religious leaders who agree with Bush on moral issues visited the White House, where they received the president's thanks and were urged to support his plan to revamp Social Security.

One who attended the meeting, the Rev. Eugene F. Rivers of Boston, said the post-election period marked the beginning of a "significant transformation" among African Americans, a clear move toward the GOP.

Rivers had been hosted in the White House by Bill and Hillary Clinton, who heralded his work with gangs in Boston. He also has conferred with Police Chief William J. Bratton about Los Angeles' gang problem. Lately, Rivers has been embraced by Bush, whom he supported last year.

One of the leaders of the Mayflower Compact effort, Vivian Berryhill, is a longtime Mississippi Republican and president of the National Coalition of Pastors' Spouses. She and her husband shared the presidential box with the Bushes during the Martin Luther King Day celebration at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The Mayflower Compact group describes itself as a self-funded effort to seek signatures from prominent black leaders nationwide to promote a conservative agenda. Berryhill and her partner in the enterprise, the Rev. Oliver N.E. Kellman Jr., a former aide to Democratic House members, have consulted with Gingrich and his staff to develop the idea, as well as with GOP leaders on Capitol Hill and in the White House.

Yet she credits the president with sparking the movement because of his unflagging interest in reaching out to black conservatives.

"This president has really changed the tone of the Republican Party," Berryhill said. "In the past, African Americans perceived Republicans as rich, white and racist. This president has come in and reached out from the beginning."

If the small shift in black voter support is thrilling to GOP leaders in Washington, it is scary to the country's most senior black elected leaders, who long have found their home in the Democratic Party.

Owens suggested that one way the Democratic Party could fight back would be to renew its commitment to investing in poor black neighborhoods. He lamented that "we don't have leaders like Lyndon Johnson, who understood the dynamics of building power, building it through your base."

Rather, he said, that lesson has been learned by Republicans like Gingrich and Rove.

Failure to respond to the GOP investment in black communities, he said, could allow Republicans to add five percentage points to the 11% they received among African American voters nationwide in 2004.

Republican officials, such as outgoing party chairman Ed Gillespie, have said they think the percentage could rise to 30 in the next presidential election — a prediction that even some GOP strategists called overly optimistic.

Even if it rises 5 percentage points, Owens said, "the Democratic Party will be paralyzed."

Owens said the GOP strategy of courting church leadership was on target. "The churches are the last institutions alive and breathing in some of these neighborhoods, and people look to them for leadership," he said.

The Bush administration has found entree to church leaders through its faith-based initiative, which is providing them with federal aid to fight social problems such as drug abuse, prison recidivism, divorce and teen pregnancy.

To counter the Republicans, Owens was preparing legislation that would send billions to impoverished neighborhoods through programs that he said would be more accountable than Bush's faith-based program.

All of the upcoming national and regional meetings of black conservatives emphasize a "moral values" agenda.

The organizer of the Heritage Foundation meeting, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson of Los Angeles, said that his session would emphasize the need for black families to reject the notion that racism caused family and economic ills and begin taking personal responsibility. He favors the Republican emphasis on traditional marriage, school vouchers and reduced reliance on government. And, he said, he sees a palpable shift in attitudes.

"I saw black preachers turning toward the Republicans in greater numbers this election. I don't know if it's because they believe in it or they want some of the faith-based money. Whatever the reason, they are turning; and as a result of the preachers leaving, many of the congregations are following."

The contract

The "Black Contract With America on Moral Values," to be unveiled today in Los Angeles, is designed to help African American churches gain influence in the Republican Party and promote socially conservative legislation. Highlights of the plan include:

* Marriage: Focus on prohibiting same-sex marriage.
•  Wealth creation: Private Social Security investment accounts and encouraging homeownership.
•  Education: School vouchers, charter schools and boosting black enrollment in higher education.
•  Prison reform: Including a "Second Chance Act," reentry programs and laws restoring the rights of felons.
•  Africa: Intervention in Sudan and penalties against corporations that explore for oil in the region.
•  Healthcare overhaul: Including programs to cover the poor.

Source: Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., Hope Christian Church, College Park, Md.

Los Angeles Times

From this morning's Imus in the Morning, a couple of excellent quotes from two savvy libs:

New Mexico's Governor Bill Richardson talks to Imus about New Mexico's latest law to help their servicemen.

Gov. Bill Richardson: "We're the first state in the union basically that said about our national guard troops and our reserves, and we have 4,000 in New Mexico, that there was not enough life insurance benefit provided by the Congress and the Federal Government. 12,000 dollars if there's a tragedy for one our servicemen. So what we have made law as of today is a $250,000 life insurance policy, that the state pays the premium, for every one of our national guards and that's in our entire reserve in New Mexico. In other words we're doing that at a state level. Partly to send a message to Congress that we are not waiting. That the Congress should at least raise the death benefit to the level that we have it at the state level, and twenty-two states are following suit. I believe that Oklahoma, Gov. Henry, Gov. Switzer in Montana are going to be enacting a law similar to us right now.

We also have an initiative that we are considering to give a tax check off for every New Mexican on your tax refund to military support families. Those families that need help, because the bread winner goes out and there's a tragedy, and then the families are devastated. I am very proud of New Mexico , we didn't have one single vote against this, and it's now a law, and I hope that other states do it. You know, we just talk this good talk about the troops. We pat them on the back, we all give speeches but they need help. Most of them come from families where they are the main breadwinners and unless you financially help and are there when there's a tragedy. I think the nation is wrong when we don't take immediate steps to be on their side. We call it fighting for our own and it is now the law and I am very proud that we did it."

Mike Barnicle of the Boston Herald discusses with Imus the rumors of a staged hug during Pres. Bush's State of the Union address.

Mike Barnicle: "I would say this to anyone who is willing to continue with this horrendous, horrendous assertion that it might of been staged, they clearly have never ever looked into the eyes of a gold star mother. You could not put your hand on that woman's shoulder from Texas, either her or her husband and say, ' Hey listen it would be a good visual if you would lean over and hug that Iraqi woman.' You could not do that. She would not do that. It was a genuine moment. The woman from Iraq whose husband was assassinated and the woman from Texas, the family from Texas who lost their child... their son. You cannot do that. It is outrageous that anyone would even suggest it."

With the news of a US Army general being sensitized because he dared to mention enjoying killing the enemy, one wonders what they would think of Patton today. It also puts the lie to the idea of an "Army of One." The original source isn't given on the website where it is posted, however, the speech is linked from The Corner at National Review Online. Long, vulgar, and a real kick to read.

GEN GEORGE PATTON'S SPEECH

"Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight.

When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American."

The General paused and looked over the crowd. "You are not all going to die," he said slowly. "Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen."

"All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken shit drilling". That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit!" The men roared in agreement.

Patton's grim expression did not change. "There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily", he roared into the microphone, "All because one man went to sleep on the job". He paused and the men grew silent. "But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did".

The General clutched the microphone tightly, his jaw out-thrust, and he continued, "An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!"

The men slapped their legs and rolled in glee. This was Patton as the men had imagined him to be, and in rare form, too. He hadn't let them down. He was all that he was cracked up to be, and more. He had IT!

"We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world", Patton bellowed. He lowered his head and shook it pensively. Suddenly he snapped erect, faced the men belligerently and thundered, "Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do". The men clapped and howled delightedly. There would be many a barracks tale about the "Old Man's" choice phrases. They would become part and parcel of Third Army's history and they would become the bible of their slang.

"My men don't surrender", Patton continued, "I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull shit either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!"

Patton stopped and the crowd waited. He continued more quietly, "All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, "Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands". But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. Shits'."

Patton paused, took a deep breath, and continued, "Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, "Fixing the wire, Sir". I asked, "Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?" He answered, "Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed". I asked, "Don't those planes strafing the road bother you? And he answered, "No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!" Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the road to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable."

The General paused and stared challengingly over the silent ocean of men. One could have heard a pin drop anywhere on that vast hillside. The only sound was the stirring of the breeze in the leaves of the bordering trees and the busy chirping of the birds in the branches of the trees at the General's left.

"Don't forget," Patton barked, "you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'."

"We want to get the hell over there", Patton continued, "The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit."

The men roared approval and cheered delightedly. This statement had real significance behind it. Much more than met the eye and the men instinctively sensed the fact. They knew that they themselves were going to play a very great part in the making of world history. They were being told as much right now. Deep sincerity and seriousness lay behind the General's colorful words. The men knew and understood it. They loved the way he put it, too, as only he could.

Patton continued quietly, "Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin", he yelled, "I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!"

"When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!"

"I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!"

"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that."

The General paused. His eagle like eyes swept over the hillside. He said with pride, "There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!"

From washingtonpost.com. Interesting article here for all those people still demanding an artificial "parity" (i.e. mediocrity) after the fashion of the NFL. The policy described puts Bud Selig's leadership in a better light, and may also explain the seemingly more secure position of Brian Cashman as his contract is due to expire Oct. 31.

Baseball's Financial Reins Bringing Yankees to Heel
Rules Drawn in 2002 Beginning to Have Effect

By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer

NEW YORK -- For months, it was almost universally accepted around baseball that Carlos Beltran, the immensely talented, 27-year-old center fielder who entered free agency this winter, would sign with the New York Yankees. The Yankees needed a center fielder to replace the aging Bernie Williams. They had the most money and, almost without fail, had made a habit in recent years of acquiring any player they wanted, no matter the cost.

But when Jan. 11 dawned, it was the crosstown New York Mets holding a news conference to announce the signing of Beltran to a seven-year, $119 million deal, with the Yankees not even making an offer. That same day, the Yankees introduced lefty Randy Johnson, their latest acquisition, in a separate news conference. In addition to not making an offer for Beltran, the Yankees say they also turned down a last-ditch pitch from agent Scott Boras that would have delivered Beltran to them for about $100 million over six years.

The Yankees' disinterest in Beltran, which team officials said was at least partly for economic reasons, sent shock waves throughout the game.

Rival teams and league officials noted with discreet satisfaction that, for the first time, the impact of economic rules written into the 2002 basic agreement between baseball owners and players appeared to have succeeded in reining in the Yankees' spending.

Yankees officials acknowledge that they were constrained by two of the changes adopted three years ago -- revenue-sharing and a penalty against high-spending clubs known as the luxury tax. "We had priorities this winter -- primarily, improving our starting pitching -- and we feel we met those priorities," Yankees President Randy Levine said. "We're like every other team, even though our revenues are larger than other teams'. We're conscious of revenue sharing and the luxury tax."

But others around the league say that another, lesser-known part of the 2002 agreement -- a measure called the debt service rule that limits the amount of debt a team can carry -- might be causing the Yankees, and several other teams, to more fundamentally rethink their free-spending ways.

"There's a real rude awakening coming for them," said one high-ranking official from another team, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. Referring to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, the official said, "Starting in 2006 [when the debt service rule goes into full effect following a three-year grace period], he won't be able to fund these $200 million payrolls any more."

Leveling the Field

Reining in the Yankees' payroll spending and ridding the industry of its ballooning debt were two of baseball's primary goals when Commissioner Bud Selig and his lieutenants risked a debilitating work stoppage and pushed through a series of economic measures designed to improve the sport's financial picture and competitive balance.

Although the measures in the 2002 basic agreement stopped short of the egalitarian system championed by the NFL and NBA, baseball's increased revenue sharing and a more severe luxury tax bargained with the powerful players' association shifted more of the sport's resources from the richest teams to the poorest. Though the basic agreement never said so specifically, the new measures were designed largely to bring the Yankees -- whose revenues and payrolls increasingly dwarfed the competition's -- back to the pack.

While the two measures were aimed at increasing competitiveness, the debt service rule specifically targeted the industry's debts, mandating "fiscal responsibility," as league officials put it, among individual teams. The rule limited the amount of debt a team can carry by tying it to its cash flow.

However, whether intentional not, the debt service rule has had another effect: Since player payroll is by far a team's largest expense, many debt-ridden teams found the best way to get in compliance with the rule was to shed payroll and limit spending. Although Yankees officials say the team is not in violation of the debt service rule, many in the game are now connecting the Yankees' fiscal restraint this winter to potential concerns over the sanction.

In 2004, under the formula laid out in the basic agreement, the Yankees paid about $88 million for the right to earn and spend as much as they did that year -- $63 million in revenue-sharing payments spread among other teams, plus a $25 million luxury tax bill. That fee represented 30 percent of the Yankees' payroll spending above the league-wide threshold of $120.5 million.

Combined, the revenue sharing and luxury tax consumed more than a quarter of the Yankees' estimated revenues of $315 million.

In 2005, the Yankees, as a third-time luxury tax-payer, will see their luxury tax rate rise to 40 percent on payroll above the new threshold of $128 million -- a figure they long ago blew past. Their trade for Johnson last month shot their 2005 payroll above $200 million, making them the first team in history to exceed that figure.

What that means is, had the Yankees signed Beltran for $100 million (the price they say Boras offered), the real cost to them, including the luxury tax, would have been more like $140 million -- something the Yankees acknowledge factored into their decision.

"We just couldn't afford to get a deal done," Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said. "We're paying an extra 40 cents on the dollar."

As things stand, the Yankees, with a payroll in excess of $200 million and almost certain to rise, already are staring at a luxury tax bill of nearly $30 million for 2005. Combined with their expected revenue sharing payments, the Yankees could be forking over $100 million to support poorer teams.

"If [the Yankees] didn't have to pay the luxury tax, it might have been a different story," said Boras, Beltran's agent. "As it was, for them to pay [Beltran] $17 million a year, it's actually more like $24 million. I would say it certainly was a parameter that created an issue in their pursuit of the player."

The Yankees' revenues (estimated by the league to be $315 million) and franchise value (estimated by Forbes Magazine as $832 million) dwarf those of any other baseball team. The Boston Red Sox, the Yankees' bitter rivals, are next, at $220 million in revenues and a franchise value of $533 million.

However, beginning late last fall, rumors began circulating within baseball that the Yankees' financial picture involved bigger concerns than the amounts of their revenue sharing and luxury tax payments. At last month's owners meetings in Phoenix, the rumors grew in strength. The Yankees, according to some owners, were carrying significant debt and were out of compliance with the debt service rule. Thus, like all offenders, they were subject to sanctions -- including, potentially, the loss of their share of a pool known as the central fund and exclusion from owners' votes -- if they did not get into compliance by the end of 2005.

Selig, in a telephone interview, would not speak specifically about the Yankees' financial situation. But he said, in general, about baseball's new economic system: "Do I think the changes have affected how teams have been run? Yes, I do."

However, an ownership source from another team said the Yankees "are clearly in violation" of the rule. "True, so are a lot of teams," the source said. "But they're the Yankees."

One source who attended the owners' meeting, where Selig gave a slide presentation detailing which teams were in and out of compliance, said the Yankees were in the category of teams currently out of compliance with the rule, but on track to be in compliance by the end of 2005.

Confronted with this claim, Levine said brusquely, "We're in compliance with the debt service rule," and declined to elaborate.

One source with knowledge of the Yankees' finances, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, downplayed the rumors, saying the Yankees' total debt was close to $100 million. "That's very little debt, relative to the value of the franchise," the source said, "and they could wipe it out by writing a check. People overestimate this issue."

A Push for Compliance

Even though Selig's powers to penalize teams that are out of compliance with the rule do not begin until after the 2005 fiscal year, league officials say he has been vigilant about forcing teams to be "on a trajectory," as one source put it, toward compliance.

That source said it would be logical to assume the Yankees were dissuaded from signing Beltran, in part, by the threat of the debt service rule -- in other words, that an extra $23.8 million in payroll commitment to Beltran in 2006 (his $17 million average annual salary plus the 40 percent luxury tax) would have pushed them out of compliance with the rule for that year.

The debt service rule, championed by San Diego Padres owner John Moores and modeled on similar rules in the loan industry, ties the amount of debt a team is allowed to carry to its cash flow, defined by the acronym EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization).

EBITDA is a commonly used financial formula that is calculated by subtracting a company's operating expenses such as payroll, administrative costs, travel and other items from gross revenues. Baseball's debt service rule limits a team's debt to 10 times its EBITDA, except in the cases of teams that are financing new stadiums, in which case the multiplier is 15.

Essentially, Selig has the power to force teams to prove they make enough money to fund their payrolls. A team with huge expenses, such as the Yankees, could be left with a low or even negative EBITDA, which would put its debt level in violation of league rules.

In April 2004, Forbes Magazine calculated the Yankees' EBITDA for fiscal 2003 as minus-$26.3 million -- an operating loss that was the second-highest in the game that year, behind the Texas Rangers'.

Although specific language in the basic agreement makes clear the rule was not designed to inhibit spending on payroll, Rob Manfred, baseball's executive vice president for labor relations, conceded it can have that effect.

"Everyone understood it could have an effect on payroll," Manfred said, "but that [the owners] wouldn't intentionally use the rule to drive payrolls down."

Although player compensation is not counted as part of a team's debt, it is a significant figure in calculating a team's EBITDA. So an out-of-compliance team could be inclined to lower its payroll as a way of improving its EBITDA figure and getting into compliance.

Baseball officials would not say how many teams are currently out of compliance with the debt service rule. However, Jonathan Mariner, baseball's chief financial officer, told CFO Magazine last year that 15 teams submitted financial plans to the commissioner's office that appeared to leave them out of compliance, and that, after revisions and pledges of additional equity, fewer than five teams remained out of compliance.

One high-ranking official from another team called the rule "a home run" for the owners that, in effect, acts as a "soft" salary cap. Although spending on free agents has risen throughout the industry this winter, total spending over the last three years, since the basic agreement went into effect, has dropped considerably from previous winters.

Another ownership source predicted that the union will fight to get rid of the rule when the basic agreement expires in 2006, but, the source said emphatically, "We're not changing it."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Excellent account of one writer's epiphany from The Columbia Journalism Review:

Among the Evangelicals
How one reporter got religion

By Mark I. Pinsky

Pressed to identify a single evangelical Christian who is not a national religious leader, a country music star, a politician, or an athlete, many journalists based outside red states would probably flail around like a desperate quiz show contestant — until the name Ned Flanders popped into their minds. Oddly enough, that animated character in The Simpsons wouldn’t be such a bad choice. Like many voting Americans, the Flanders family says grace at meals, attends church most Sundays, reads and refers to the Bible, and prays out loud. Amid the lingering bewilderment in the wake of the presidential election, I can sympathize with those of my colleagues still puzzling over the evangelical enigma. It’s never easy to parachute into an alien environment and file a coherent story eight hours later. As with a Boston journalist covering the Catholic Church or one in Salt Lake City covering the Mormons, reporting about evangelicals while living in the Sunbelt provides the luxury of home-field advantage, as well as the opportunity to return again and again to the subject.

When I began covering religion for the Los Angeles Times in Orange County in 1985, I knew very little about Sunbelt Christianity. A Jew, born in Miami and raised in the New Jersey suburbs, I first read the New Testament in a college course, and only because it was then required at my historically Methodist university. But over a decade at the Times covering this growing (and, to me, strange) tribe of people called evangelicals I learned a lot — or so I thought. Since this was the era of the televangelism scandals, I focused on religious broadcasting, the outlets based in southern California, like Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power and Paul Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network, that knit together the nation’s evangelical community. Through them, I reasoned, I could better understand their viewers.

At the time, this top-down approach to the beat seemed logical. I was working in Orange County, but I lived in a quaint, cosmopolitan beach community in Los Angeles County, and so I had little visceral sense of what was happening at the evangelical grass roots in my circulation area. In retrospect, it is clear that I should have been paying closer attention to another, equally important story in my backyard: a little congregation called Saddleback Valley Community Church in southern Orange County, which would grow into one of the nation’s most influential mega-churches. Its pastor, the Reverend Rick Warren, whom I confess I never sought out to interview, developed the motivational concept of the forty-day “Purpose Driven Church” that is today sweeping the nation’s congregations and, in book form, is a fixture on the best-seller lists.

Moving to the other end of the Sunbelt in 1995 to cover religion for the Orlando Sentinel, I didn’t have the opportunity to make the same mistake. While evangelicals are part of a varied theological landscape in California, they are the landscape in Florida: Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, charismatic Catholics, and even many mainline Protestants. Suddenly, I found myself in a very different Orange County. The most ubiquitous bumper sticker was not for a commercial rock station; it was for one devoted to contemporary Christian music. In addition to being a tourist Mecca, Orlando was becoming a New Jerusalem for international evangelical organizations, much like Colorado Springs. Reflexively, I returned to my top-down ways, making up for lost time by doing articles about influential para-church organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ and Wycliffe Bible Translators that had by then migrated from southern California to central Florida.

But something was different. For the first time in my life, I was living in a sea of believing, faithful Christians, and the cold shock felt like total immersion. As on the West Coast, I learned a lot on the job, interviewing ministers, leaders, and lay people. I attended church services more often than many Christians — some months more often than I attended my own synagogue. But the most intense part of my education came from outside the job, apart from the mediation of a reporter’s notebook. At PTA meetings, at Scouts, in the supermarket checkout line, and in my neighborhood I encountered evangelicals simply as people, rather than as subjects or sources of quotes for my stories. Our children went to the same birthday parties. We sat next to each other in the bleachers while the kids played recreational sports. Our family doctor went on frequent mission trips and kept a New Testament in each examining room. In the process, I learned about the Great Commission, the biblical obligation of all Christians to share their faith with the once-born and the unsaved.

Evangelicals were no longer caricatures or abstractions. I learned to interpret their metaphors and read their body language. From personal, day-to-day experience I observed what John Green at the University of Akron has discerned from extensive research: evangelicals were not monolithic nor were they, as The Washington Post infamously characterized them, “poor, uneducated and easy to command.” Like Ned Flanders, they are more likely to be overzealous than hypocritical, although there is certainly some of the latter. They don’t march in lockstep to what Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell or Focus on the Family’s James Dobson tell them, and they hold surprisingly diverse views on many issues. While making common cause politically, their theological differences range from the subtle to the significant. For evangelicals, religion is not just for Sundays — or Election Day.

This epiphany — it would be hard to call it anything else, except maybe a revelation — transformed the way I approached my beat. I discarded the traditional way of structuring my stories. No more, “While some wacko evangelical leaders over here say this, these rational secularists and moderate mainliners over there say that,” with an author or academic in the middle tossed in for balance. While symmetrical, this is so schematic that it makes the result predictable and unrevealing. Instead, I decided to treat evangelicals as a discrete universe. I started to write about them in a way that would be interesting and informative to my suburban, Sunbelt readers — and to me. That is, “Some evangelicals say this, but others disagree,” and why and what that means.

Once I applied this new template, the stories changed. Illuminating fissures and fault lines began to appear. Southern Baptists might oppose women in the pulpit, but Pentecostals did not. Conservative Catholics rejected the use of condoms for birth control or in AIDS prevention, but Protestants did not. Christian backing for Israel and its policies often came with a galling and divisive price tag for American Jewish allies: simultaneous support for apostate Messianics who want to convert their faithful coreligionists. While there is near unanimity opposing gay marriage and abortion among evangelicals, serious and fundamental divisions exist over other issues, including the Iraq war, environmentalism, tax policy — and yes, even civil unions. I know this because it is what the evangelicals I know tell me. An evangelical woman in my wife’s book club, a Democrat, jokingly referred to George Bush as “the antichrist.”

I would like to say that this hard-earned understanding of evangelicals enabled me to predict the outcome of the recent presidential election, but it didn’t. At the same time, neither did the returns leave me as shell-shocked as they did some of my colleagues. And despite the blustering of some leaders, I think I know why grass-roots evangelicals do not feel triumphant about the results. True, in states like Florida they see Republican control of all branches of government, from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C. Conservatives and Christians dominate the AM radio dial, and the Fox News Channel leads the local cable television ratings. But despite all this, many of my evangelical friends and neighbors still feel besieged, beleaguered, and, to some degree, powerless.

The threat they cannot defeat at the polls is a pervasive, popular culture they consider to be, for the most part, a toxic mix of loveless sexuality and senseless violence. As a parent, a media consumer, and — in my heart — a blue-stater, I have to agree with them on this point, adding to the mix only my personal (elitist?) complaint: pop culture’s relentless stupidity.

This is not to say that I agree with them on much else, politically or theologically. Yet neither does it keep me from understanding the sincerity of their beliefs, or from reporting them fairly. I may be flattering myself, but over time I think I have developed a relationship of mutual trust and mutual respect with the evangelical community and its leaders. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’ve given up trying to bring me to Jesus. That’s what evangelicals do, it’s in their spiritual DNA, and I’m okay with that.

As posted on Jihad Watch:

Down syndrome youth used as suicide bomber

From The Age, with thanks to Nicolei:

Amar was 19, but he had the mind of a four-year-old. This handicap didn't stop the insurgency's hard men as they strapped explosives to his chest and guided him to a voting centre in suburban Al-Askan.

And before yesterday's sunrise in Baghdad, his grieving parents loaded his broken remains on the roof of a taxi to lead a sorrowful procession to the holy city of Najaf. There, they gave him a ceremonial wash, shrouded him in white cotton and buried him next to the shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of their Shiite creed....

He had Down syndrome or, as the Iraqis say, he's a mongoli, and when his parents, Ahmed, 42, and Fatima, 40, went to vote with their two daughters Amar was left in the family home.

They presume that in their absence he set out to fill his day as he always did - wandering the streets of the neighbourhood until, usually, a friend or neighbour would bring him home around dusk....

"He was mindless, but he was mostly happy, laughing and playing with the children in the street. Now, his father is inconsolable; his mother cries all the time," the teacher said.

After voting at 7.30am, Amar's parents joined their extended family for a celebration that became a lunch of chicken and rice, soup and orange juice, at the home of a relative.

The sound of the explosion interrupted the party. But, the cousin said, it was assumed to be a mortar shell, a follow-up to the barrage across the city in the first hours of voting.

"Everyone was very happy and excited, but news came that a mongoli had been a bomber. Ahmed and Fatima became distressed and they raced home. They got neighbours to search and one of them identified Amar's head where it lay on the pavement and his body was broken into pieces.

"I have heard of them using dead people and donkeys and dogs to hide their bombs, but how could they do this to a boy like Amar?"

Apparently, Amar triggered the bomb before he got to the intended target. It exploded while he was crossing open ground.

Normally I don't keep an article this long, but the analysis is too valuable not to keep. A brilliant piece from the Opinion Journal.

THE LIBERAL MIND

The Endless Party
What do Democrats stand for? The real question is, what do they stand against?
By William Voegeli

Thursday, February 3, 2005

The epilogue of a presidential election is strangely like the opening chapter. Before the primaries there are several candidates. First this one is in the lead, then that one, and finally the party settles on the nominee. After the general election, the party that lost has to make sense of what went wrong. For a while one explanation gains favor, then another, and finally the party settles on the lesson to draw from defeat.

It's been only three months since John Kerry gave his concession speech, but the process of explaining the loss has already had phases. In the first and angriest one, the Democrats blamed the voters. Within two days of the election, Jane Smiley, Maureen Dowd and Garry Wills (among others) fingered the electorate's stupidity and bigotry as the decisive factor. Although a candid expression of what lots of Democrats really think, vilifying the people creates problems for a party that might like to win an election at some point in the future.

If it won't do to blame the voters, maybe the thing to do is blame the candidate. A variety of criticisms have been put forward. But few Democrats can work up the anger against Mr. Kerry that they directed at Al Gore after the 2000 election or Michael Dukakis in 1988. It's not that Mr. Kerry engendered more affection than his predecessors, or that he ran a much better campaign. Instead, the Democrats realize that it's pointless to keep blaming the candidate for the party's defeats.

Certainly, Mr. Kerry was not a perfect candidate. No one suitable for Mount Rushmore, however, was running in the Iowa caucuses. It's hard to see how any of the alternatives to Mr. Kerry--Howard Dean? Richard Gephardt? Wesley Clark?--would have done better in November. Political parties don't exist to nominate a new Pericles every four years. Their mission at the presidential level is to provide the institutional resources and political rationale that make it possible to win an election with a nominee who, inevitably, has flaws and makes mistakes.

The Democrats certainly did not lose because they (and allied groups, like MoveOn.org and America Coming Together) failed at the nuts-and-bolts level of finding their voters and getting them to polling places. John Kerry received six million more votes than Al Gore. The problem, as Matt Bai explained in the New York Times Magazine, is that Democrats have believed from the time of FDR right up to the 2000 election that a majority of Americans agreed with them, were with them--and thus they could not lose a high-turnout election.

But in 2004 they registered and brought to the polls every prospective voter they might realistically hope to find--and still lost. It is clear, Mr. Bai wrote, that "turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds."

By the process of elimination, then, a clear frontrunner has emerged in the race to explain the 2004 election: The Democrats lost because they couldn't change enough minds. But then, they can't change minds if they don't know their own. Even those who argue that the lack of a clear message was the Kerry campaign's chief problem go on to say that it reflected a larger confusion in the Democratic Party and, indeed, in American liberalism.

According to Ryan Lizza in The New Republic, "The no-message critique is congealing into conventional wisdom." He argues that "the Kerry campaign had a laundry list of policy proposals, or, in the words of James Carville, a litany rather than a narrative." In his Washington Post column, Harold Meyerson wrote, "Cover the Democrats for any length of time and you become expert in campaigns that don't seem to be about anything. They have policies; Democrats are good at policies. But all too often the campaigns lack a message--a sense of what the candidate's about and what he aims to do." Ruy Teixeira, a co-author of 2002's "The Emerging Democratic Majority," a title that sounds ever more forlorn, said in a postelection interview that "Democrats have to have large and good ideas that people can recognize--ideas voters can sum up in a couple of sentences."

Many of the Democrats attracted to this explanation appear to have spent time in creative writing workshops. Everyone, suddenly, is talking about the crucial importance of the "narrative." "A narrative is the key to everything," according to Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. Even Sen. Kerry's brother, Cam, said, "There is a very strong John Kerry narrative that is about leadership, character and trust. But it was never made central to the campaign."

The narrative of Democrats trying to find a narrative might be more promising, or at least more interesting, if it were fresher. The problem is the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections, not to mention control of Congress in 1994, and have talked about the urgent need to redefine and re-explain themselves after every one of those defeats. It has been 24 years since that dim, unelectable extremist Ronald Reagan won a landslide against Jimmy Carter. A generation later, can there really be any promising ideas that haven't already been taken down from the shelf?

Here is what the Democrats have to show for 2 1/2 decades of introspection, besides a worsening win-loss record: After Walter Mondale lost 49 states in 1984, the Democratic Leadership Council was brought forth, conceived in panic and dedicated to the proposition that a politically viable party must become less liberal. In reaction, various groups and candidates have asserted that the prescription for Democratic victories is to become more liberal, to present the voters a choice, not an echo. It's hard to say who will win this tug-of-war, and twice as hard to see how either approach will reverse the Democrats' losing streak.

The only other nostrum has been that of the neoliberals (once called "Atari Democrats"). To the extent their advice ever came into focus, it was that more liberalism or less liberalism, bigger or smaller government, was not the issue. Making government smarter--more effective, flexible and responsive--was. Gary Hart nearly wrested the 1984 Democratic nomination from Walter Mondale by baiting him about being beholden to such interest groups as the AFL-CIO. The hot public-affairs book after Bill Clinton's victory in 1992 was "Reinventing Government," now available in a remainder bin near you. Vice President Gore went on the David Letterman show with a hammer, a glass ashtray and safety goggles to demonstrate something-or-other about how the Clinton administration was making big government safe for democracy.

Most of the footprints left by neoliberalism have been washed away; the rest are fading. Bill Clinton, in seeking a Third Way, disparaged the false dichotomy between big and limited government. With the passage of time, Mr. Clinton's triangulation looks less and less like a political philosophy and more like a personality disorder, the type afflicting a man who thinks every dichotomy is false. (As Charles Kesler has pointed out, Mr. Clinton apparently believed that there was a Third Way between fidelity and adultery, and between telling the truth and lying.) Good government is, in any case, too small and banal an idea to settle the problem of the proper size and scope of the welfare state, and too slender a thread to tie together a majority coalition for the Democratic Party.

If the Democrats' current attempt to figure out what they stand for is going to be more enlightening than their previous efforts, they will have to grapple with fundamental questions, not peripheral ones. The gravity of the situation calls for architects, not housekeepers. The 2004 campaign, after all, was a single episode in a much longer narrative, the story of American liberalism trying to define and advance itself. What's curious is that although intellectual clarity has never been liberalism's strength, for a very long time this confusion did not cause any political problems. Almost 40 years ago, the political philosopher Joseph Cropsey observed that while its contradictions were "damaging to liberalism as a theory, [they have] not hindered liberalism as a political movement." "It is instructive," he commented, "to note how wide is the gap between theoretical sufficiency and political efficacy."

The "no message" interpretation of the 2004 election claims that this gap has now closed, finally and completely: Liberalism cannot become politically strong again until it stops being so theoretically weak. But Democrats need to recognize how far back, and how far down, liberalism's confusion goes. The notion that liberalism is fundamentally indecipherable was voiced frequently during the 1930s, when liberals absolutely dominated American politics. Raymond Moley, an erstwhile advisor to FDR, wrote of the New Deal in his memoirs, "To look upon these programs as the result of a unified plan, was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter's tools, geometry books, and chemistry sets in a boy's bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator." In 1940 another New Dealer, the economist Alvin Hansen, admitted, "I really do not know what the basic principle of the New Deal is. I know from my experience in the government that there are as many conflicting opinions among the people in Washington as we have in the country at large."

But the complaint that it's impossible to figure liberalism out has, until recently, typically been voiced by exasperated conservatives. For decades they have watched liberals rushing around with wheelbarrows and ladders, busy, busy, busy at building the welfare state. New programs are created, old ones expanded, urgent needs discovered and rediscovered. Conservatives marvel at this vast construction site and ask prosaic questions: What is this thing going to look like when it's done? How big is it going to be? How will we know when it's finished? And just in case there's any doubt that they are conservatives, how much is all this going to cost?

The replies have not been illuminating. Their major motif has been soaring humbug. In 1943 Archibald MacLeish expressed liberals' hopes about realizing the "America of the imagination":

We have, and we know we have, the abundant means to bring our boldest dreams to pass--to create for ourselves whatever world we have the courage to desire. We have the metal and the men to take this country down, if we please to take it down, and to build it again as we please to build it. We have the tools and the skill and the intelligence to take our cities apart and put them together, to lead our roads and rivers where we please to lead them, to build our houses where we want our houses, to brighten the air, clean the wind, to live as men in this Republic, free men, should be living. We have the power and the courage and the resources of good-will and decency and common understanding . . . to create a nation such as men have never seen.

One could discount this as rhetoric, considering that MacLeish was a poet by trade. It is, however, language that working politicians relied on as well. President Lyndon Johnson's speech in 1964 calling for the creation of a Great Society "explained" it in these terms:

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But this is just the beginning.

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

Parsing such blather might seem as pointless as it is cruel. But MacLeish and Johnson do reveal, inadvertently, truths about liberalism's meaning and its problems. First, conservatives' questions about the welfare state's ultimate size and cost are turned aside by rhetoric that emphasizes the processes and attitudes that go into building it. What's important, liberals say, is that the creation of government programs to promote social welfare be pursued in a vigorous, confident, optimistic manner, suffused with concern for the vulnerable and respect for the common man, unconstrained by the stifling precepts of the past. (Looking forward to an activist Kennedy presidency after the somnolent Eisenhower administration, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote, "The '60's will probably be spirited, articulate, inventive, incoherent, turbulent, with energy shooting off wildly in all directions. Above all, there will be a sense of motion, of leadership, of hope.") Conservatives wonder if all this lofty talk is a smokescreen--they wonder, that is, whether there really are blueprints in a safe back at the central office, detailing the vast, Swedish-style welfare state that is liberalism's ultimate goal for America.

The answer is, probably not. If that answer is correct, it then raises this question: Which would be more troubling--the existence or the absence of those blueprints? That is, should conservatives conclude that liberals pose a graver threat to self-government, freedom and prosperity if they have an ambitious but hidden agenda, or if liberalism has no master plan at all because it is, ultimately and always, an adhocracy?

Liberals have a practical reason why they won't say what they ultimately want, and a theoretical reason why they can't say it. The practical reason is that any usably clear statement of what the welfare state should be would define not only a goal but a limit. Conceding that an outer limit exists, and stipulating a location for it, strengthens the hand of conservatives--with liberals having admitted, finally, that the welfare state can and should do only so much, the argument now, the conservatives will say, is over just how much that is.

Keeping open, permanently, the option for the growth of the welfare state reflects the belief that the roster of human needs and aspirations to which the government should minister is endless. Any attempt to curtail it would be arbitrary and wrong. In his concession speech after losing to Ronald Reagan in 1984, Walter Mondale listed the groups he had devoted his political career to assisting: "the poor, the unemployed, the elderly, the handicapped, the helpless and the sad" (emphasis added).

This gets us to the theoretical reason why liberalism cannot incorporate a limiting principle or embrace an ultimate destination. Given mankind's long history of sorrows, most people would consider securing "abundance and liberty for all," ending poverty and achieving racial justice, a pretty good day's work. For LBJ it was, astoundingly, "just the beginning."

Liberal intellectuals who drew up the blueprint for the Great Society regarded peace, prosperity and justice as achievements that were not merely modest but troubling. They lived with a strange dread--that if Americans' lives became too comfortable, the people would decide that the country had been reformed enough, thank you, even though liberals knew there was still--always--work to be done. In 1943 the National Public Resources Board, which FDR hoped would chart the course for a renewed, enlarged postwar New Deal, advocated the recognition of various welfare rights, including the right to "rest, recreation and adventure." In a speech he gave to the Americans for Democratic Action in 1948, the group's first chairman, Wilson Wyatt, rejected "the view that government's only responsibility is to prevent people from starving or freezing to death. We believe it is the function of government to lift the level of human existence. It is the job of government to widen the chance for development of individual personalities."

The fear that liberalism would be thanked for its service and given a gold watch became more acute as the American economy soared after World War II. In 1957, the year before John Kenneth Galbraith published "The Affluent Society," Arthur Schlesinger tried to redefine liberalism's mission for such a society. He wrote that the New Deal's establishment of the welfare state and Keynesian management of the economy heralded the completion of the work of "quantitative liberalism." Its logical and necessary successor should be "qualitative liberalism," which would "oppose the drift into the homogenized society. It must fight spiritual unemployment as [quantitative liberalism] once fought economic unemployment. It must concern itself with the quality of popular culture and the character of lives to be lived in our abundant society."

To speak of lifting the level of human existence suggests that there are higher and lower levels of human existence. Such thoughts imply a certain congruence between modern liberalism and the worldview of classical philosophy and the great monotheistic religions. But, of course, the rejection of those traditions has been crucial to modern liberalism, and to modernism generally. Plato poses, as the central question of philosophy, how shall we live? The liberal response, expressed most directly by John Stuart Mill, is that the question is unanswerable, and the practical imperatives of politics cannot be put on hold forever while philosophers debate it. Therefore, the only realistic answer, one that reflects both the need to find a way to live together and the futility of ascertaining the meaning of the good life, is that we should all live however we want, constrained only by the need to choose a "lifestyle" that does not interfere with anyone else's living the way he wants to live.

In "A Theory of Justice," John Rawls argued that "democracy in judging each other's aims is the foundation of self-respect in a well-ordered society." Rawls goes on to say that the person whose aims consist of counting blades of grass should not be denigrated but supported--that is, both praised and publicly subsidized. "Different strokes for different folks" is a meager philosophy, but also a coherent one. If liberals were content to leave it at that, they would at least have one large idea voters could sum up in a couple of sentences.

But they have never been content to leave it at that. Liberalism has never found a way to regard the "character of lives to be lived in our abundant society" with indifference, in the good sense of being tolerant, for fear of also being indifferent in the bad sense of being callous. The social critic inside every liberal cannot resist berating other people's unsatisfactory lifestyles--some are merely inane, others are actually menacing. Fifty years ago this scorn was directed at suburban split-levels. Today the target is evangelical churches. Meanwhile, the social worker inside every liberal cannot resist treating these unfortunate lifestyle choices as problems to be solved.

How does liberalism square this circle, embracing relativism while declaring that millions of nonliberals are "spiritually unemployed"? (It's hard to imagine anyone being more spiritually unemployed than Rawls's grass-counter.) The moral standpoint from which liberalism passes judgment is one it derives from John Dewey, for whom the highest imperative was "growth." According to political scientist Robert Horwitz, Dewey looked to "the bright promise of an evolutionary understanding of human potentialities, a view which presents boundless possibilities for development." The point of growth is more growth; the only standard by which we judge the direction of past growth is whether it facilitates or stymies future growth. It is in this vein that Johnson spoke of a Great Society where the government will enrich minds, enlarge talents and concern itself with monitoring our leisure hours to make sure we are constructive and reflective, not bored and restless. It is an agenda for which prosperity, liberty and justice are "just the beginning," and one which, constantly advancing the constantly evolving goal of personal growth, can have no end.

Bill Clinton was fond of saying that character is "a journey, not a destination." But to leave home without a destination, convinced that the very idea of a destination is arbitrary and false, is to embark on a "journey" that will be no different from just wandering around. How, then, shall we live? The entirety of liberalism's answer is, according to Rawls, that it is better to play chess than checkers: "Human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized or the greater its complexity." Humans can rescue their lives from meaninglessness by striving, however they pass their days, to employ more rather than fewer of their talents, finding new ones and expanding known ones, to the sole purpose of being able to enlarge them still further, endlessly. We have seen the future, and it's an adult education seminar, where ever-greater latitude is afforded to ever-smaller souls, and where freedom means nothing higher than the care and feeding of personal idiosyncrasies.

As an ethical precept this position is risible. As the basis for social criticism, it is infuriating. This is the standard by which liberals judge us to be spiritually unemployed, the basis on which they are going to lift the level of our existence? Many Democrats lament that Republicans have been successful in getting working-class Americans to vote "against their own interests," by stressing social issues like abortion and gay marriage. Thomas Frank wrapped an entire bestseller, "What's the Matter with Kansas?," around this idea. It's a "false consciousness" diagnosis that betrays rather than describes the Democrats' problem: the smug assumption that we know, far better than they do themselves, the "real interests" of people who live in dorky places and went to schools no one has heard of.

As a political philosophy, the belief that "it is the job of government to widen the chance for development of individual personalities" is not merely lame and insulting, but dangerous. The endless widening and development of our personalities will require and legitimize the endless widening and development of our government. The threat goes beyond taxes, spending, borrowing and regulating that increase without limit. It culminates in a therapeutic nanny state that corrupts both its wardens and its wards. Convinced that they are intervening, constantly and pervasively, to assist the growth of people who would otherwise stagnate, the enlighteners don't need coercion to enfold the people in a soft totalitarianism. The objects of this therapy, meanwhile, may grow accustomed to it, and ultimately prefer being cared for to being free; or conclude that being free has no value apart from being cared for.

Lyndon Johnson gave one other memorable speech in 1964. At a campaign rally in Providence, R.I., he climbed onto his car, grabbed a bullhorn and summed up his political philosophy: "I just want to tell you this--we're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few." The Democrats' problem is not that they, like "Seinfeld," are a show about nothing. It's that they are a show about everything, or anything. (At one point, the Kerry-for-president Web site referred to 79 separate federal programs he wanted to create or expand.)

Ruy Teixeira says that after 2004, "the bigger question is: What do the Democrats stand for?" Here's a better and bigger question still: What do the Democrats stand against? Tell us, if indeed it's true, that Democrats don't want to do for America what social democrats have done for France or Sweden. Tell us that the stacking of one government program on top of the other is going to stop, if indeed it will, well short of a public sector that absorbs half the nation's income and extensively regulates what we do with the other half. Explain how the spirit of live-and-let-live applies, if indeed it does, to everyone equally--to people who take family, piety and patriotism seriously, not merely to people whose lives and outlooks are predicated on regarding them ironically.

Until those questions are answered, until Americans have confidence about the limits liberalism will establish and observe, it's hard to see when the Democratic narrative will again have a happy ending.

Mr. Voegeli is a research fellow at the Claremont Institute. This article appears in the Winter issue of the Claremont Review of Books.

From The Winston Salem Journal:

Williams wants Chapel Hill fans to kick up their Heels
By Bill Cole

Monday, January 24, 2005

CHAPEL HILL

The noise in the Smith Center is growing louder, the students are acting rowdier, and the paying customers are getting off their wallets and onto their feet.

Unconventional behavior is taking root at North Carolina. And it is only the beginning of a transformation instigated by Coach Roy Williams, with one very determined purpose.

He wants to turn UNC's massive home arena into a pit that gives his basketball teams an invincible homecourt advantage.

"I want to win," Williams said. "That's all I care about. We're going to make the dadgum place better."

Williams is looking for every edge to help his teams through ACC play and intersectional games against the likes of Kentucky. He revealed some of his plans when asked about the wisdom of UNC's women's program moving today's game against Duke from Carmichael Auditorium, the women's home arena, to the Smith Center, which houses more than twice the number of seats.

If changing venues creates a more threatening atmosphere that will decide the outcome of a game, Williams is all for it. Williams wouldn't hesitate to play games in Carmichael or Woollen Gymnasium if he knew for certain his teams would win and the opponents would be at a disadvantage.

"You tell me I've got a better chance of winning, you darn right," Williams said. "I'd go there in a heartbeat. I'd go into a barn. I want to win."

Games at the Smith Center have been called nights at the opera by critics because the crowds have been reserved since the building opened in 1986 and priority seats went to wealthy older donors. Williams has been working with Dick Baddour - UNC's athletics director - and other school officials on changes since becoming coach, to insure that crowds become part of the games.

Williams wants to make the Smith Center as hostile as Carmichael, the previous home of the men's program. UNC had a 169-20 record in Carmichael, which seats 10,000 spectators. Williams considered Carmi-chael the greatest home-court advantage in college basketball when working as an assistant to Coach Dean Smith in the 1980s.

"At times in Carmichael I thought it got so loud that something was going to happen," Williams said. "I don't know what it was but I used to get a little eerie feeling that it got so loud that something was going to happen (and help UNC).

"I felt that way at Allen Fieldhouse (at Kansas) a couple of times. I'm going to feel that way out here because we're going to make this place that same way."

Some of the changes would make Smith cringe. Rock music blares over the loudspeakers before the start of every game. As the players for both teams converge at midcourt for the opening tap the song Jump Around by the group House of Pain threatens to shatter eardrums.

One cosmetic change took place three weeks ago. New "ribbon" message boards replaced the old message boards located at the mezzanine level at the bottom of the upper deck.

The old message boards were nearly 20 years old. The ribbon boards are sleek and flashy with a 21st-century look.

Scheduled to be replaced for next season are the four giant video screens that show game action and replays.

The screens are located at the top of the upper deck across from each corner of the court. They, too, are almost 20 years old. The screens comprise 36 squared sections that give the appearance of window panes; not all have the same clarity.

Williams once described the screens as resembling Tennessee's checkerboard end zone at Neyland Stadium.

"I've badgered these guys all the time," Williams said. "You know those ribbon boards out there? You know that wasn't Old Saint Nick that dropped those in. I told them I wanted something.

"We're going to have new video boards next year. It's not because some great Tar Heel in the sky decided to let them have video boards.

"Ever since I came here in the first Rams Club meeting I went to I talked about creating an atmosphere here where it's a 'happening,' where it's not just you go and sit back and you're entertained. You're a part of the entertainment. I think that what we have is a fantastic building. When it came out it was the Taj Mahal. We're trying to do everything we can to keep it the best building there is for college basketball."

Sean May, UNC's starting center, would like to see more students given seats at the games and in areas closer to the floor and the UNC bench. May said that students can provide invaluable support.

"I watched Illinois last night and it's such an advantage," May said. "There's nothing like it."

Williams is hoping for nights in the Smith Center to be as menacing as one night in Carmichael in the '80s. UNC was playing Virginia and Ralph Sampson and Carmichael was in bedlam before tipoff. The noise was deafening. Nothing could be heard on the floor.

Williams helped Virginia with the starting lineup introductions because he was standing next to the public-address announcer, who couldn't be heard. Williams yelled the names of Virginia's players when announced to Craig Littlepage, a Virginia assistant, so that Littlepage could tap each player when his name was called to go out on the floor. Littlepage, who was 10 feet from Williams, couldn't hear a word Williams said and had to read his lips.

"I did a game in Argentina where (spectators) tied sheets around the rafters and tied them around their waist so if they fell off the rafter would catch them," Williams said. "I want a home-court advantage like that one. I want them willing to tie sheets around their butts and they're all up there yelling, 'Go Tar Heels.' "

From USA Today:

Ned a valued member of 'The Simpsons'

NEW YORK (AP) — Good heavens! Ned Flanders has come into his own. A zealous instrument of God, Ned has long been instrumental to The Simpsons as it lampoons organized religion (that is, when not mocking virtually every other human institution, from business to democracy to its own TV network).

But lately the ground has shifted beneath the Simpsons' hometown of Springfield, U.S.A., along with the rest of the nation. The new term has begun for a president whose re-election was clinched by the "moral values" ballyhoo. The current climate finds faith synonymous with patriotism, while "secular" is code for un-American.

Before on The Simpsons, Ned was a secondary figure — Homer's cloyingly pious next-door neighbor. But the values he embodies in exaggerated form now monopolize the political scene. In fact, one might say that Homer is Ned's next-door neighbor, not the other way around, so clearly does Ned bask in the mainstream.

"The values he represents have become more visible in American life," agrees Simpsons executive producer Al Jean, "as people who maybe are outward advocates of Ned's values have come into positions of power. We always satirize who's in power and what the cultural zeitgeist is, so currently the point of view Ned has is a little more ripe for satire."

Ned stands front and center in Sunday's edition of The Simpsons when, in an unlikely collaboration with Homer, he co-produces the Super Bowl halftime show as (what else?) a biblical pageant. Homer portrays Noah. The stadium is flooded from a Duff's Beer blimp. Ned preaches the Word. Take that, Janet Jackson.

(The episode follows Fox's real-life Super Bowl telecast, except in the Pacific time zone, where it airs at 7 p.m.)

Ned answers the call of show biz after seeing a sex-aid commercial for seniors and declaring, "There's nothing but filth on TV." He seizes his camcorder and films a backyard biblical drama: a bloody re-creation of the story of Cain and Abel, with his two young sons in the starring roles.

Homer's wife, Marge, is troubled by Ned's Passion of the Christ -inspired antics. "There's more to the Bible than blood and gore," she says.

But Ned (voiced by Harry Shearer) sneers in response, "I guess you'd rather see a film about a liberal European wizard school. Or the latest sexcapade of Miss Ashley Judd."

Ned's cinematic crusade fizzles when money man Mr. Burns withdraws his backing. But a panic-stricken Homer — who was hired to create the Super Bowl show, then can't think of anything to do — desperately needs Ned to help him.

"Maybe," says Ned, thrilled to get this globe-spanning pulpit, "God brought us together for a reason."

Whatever the reason, Ned has been a holier-than-thou thorn in Homer's side since the very first episode of The Simpsons in 1989, when Ned decorated his house with a dazzling array of Christmas lights.

"Too bright," pouted Homer, embarrassed by his own house's shabby display.

Homer still feels bedeviled by Ned's goody-two-shoes style, his glossy cheer, his habit of injecting "diddly" into things he says, like his chipper greeting, "Hi-diddly-do!"

In a startling admission, Ned once disclosed that he was 60 years old, then attributed his youthful appearance to "the three C's: clean living, chewing thoroughly and a daily dose of 'vitamin church'."

Mighty easy to see why Homer would say, "I don't care if Ned Flanders is the nicest guy in the world — he's a jerk!"

Of course, Homer knows jerks from the inside out. For 16 seasons of The Simpsons, he has been a champion jerk — lazy, dimwitted and irresponsible. His chief pleasures are beer, snacks and endless hours of TV while planted on the couch. He reigns as the flawed secular Everyman.

"I think Homer is a pretty bad guy in a lot of ways," says Jean, who helps shape his personality, and adds, "The writers like Ned as a person better than Homer."

But Ned's faith-based deficiencies serve The Simpsons well as a Homer counterbalance. Spiritually in bondage, Ned is a model of righteousness gone wrong.

He must surely have been shocked to behold (or, more likely, learn about second-hand) Janet Jackson's flash dance during Super Bowl XXXVIII, and definitely would have supported the anti-media backlash. Like he says, "There's nothing but filth on TV."

But how to explain why his squeaky-clean extravaganza flops with the public?

"All over America today," reports newsman Kent Brockman, "viewers were outraged by the Super Bowl halftime show's blatant display of religion and decency."

This can only be a temporary setback. These days, Ned represents the nation's ruling point of view. And what of citizens who beg to differ with it? Thank heaven The Simpsons, at least, still guarantees them a laugh.

From The Australian:

Mark Steyn: The 'civil war' that wasn't

And so the "looming Iraqi election fiasco" joins "the brutal Afghan winter" and "the brutal Iraqi summer" and "the seething Arab street" and all the other junk in the overflowing trash can of post-9/11 Western media fictions. The sight of millions of brave voters emerging from polling stations holding high their purple dye-stained fingers was so inspiring that, from America's Democratic Party to European protest rallies, opponents of the war waited, oh, all of three minutes before flipping the Iraqis their own fingers, undyed.
"No one in the United States should try to over-hype this election," warned John Kerry yesterday before embarking on the world champion limbo dance of Iraqi election under-hyping.

He has a point. One vote does not a functioning democracy make. To be a truly advanced, sophisticated democracy you need an opposition party that knows how to react to good news by sounding whiny and grudging and moving the goalposts. "The real test is not the election," he declared, airily swatting aside 8 million voters. "The real test is . . ."

I dozed off at that point, so I'm unable to tell you what moved goalposts the senator inserted. But no doubt they involved, as they always do, the Bush administration needing to "reach out" more effectively to involve the "international community". "International community", by the way, doesn't mean Tony Blair, John Howard, the Poles, Japan, India, Fiji, et al but Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan, a pantomime horse in which both men are playing the rear end. But, in an advanced, sophisticated democracy, that's how we define the "international community": no matter how many foreigners are in your coalition, it's unilateral unless Jacques is on board.

In Commonwealth countries, of course, we have the concept of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition, so called because the Loyal Opposition carries on like a hysterical old queen. Thus, Kim Beazley, back in the saddle and already sore – on the very eve of the Iraqi election triumph, when elementary prudence might have suggested waiting 24 hours before singing another refrain of When It's Quagmire Time on the Tigris.

But the old new Labor Party leader had barely taken possession of the keys to the executive washroom before he was "warning" the US that it risked being bogged down in – all together now – "a long-running civil war in Iraq".

How lame do you have to be to be the last guy on the planet to do the old "Iraq on the brink of civil war" routine? Just as "the brutal Afghan winter" that was supposed to mire shivering US forces in the graveyard of empire is now one-third of a decade behind schedule, so Iraq has now been "teetering on the brink of civil war" for coming up for two years. Brink-wise, that's quite a leisurely teeter. There's no danger of a "long-running civil war in Iraq". Instead, we've had a long-running hysteria about impending civil war in Iraq.

Indeed, as long runs go, predictions of Iraqi civil war are the Cats of doomsday scenarios – except that, unlike Cats, it's all previews and no opening night. Tom Clark of Canada's CTV network was warning that "Iraq could be teetering on the brink of civil war" in August 2003. Graydon Carter, editor of the perfumed glossy Vanity Fair, was warning that Iraq was "on the brink of civil war" a month earlier.

To their credit, both men teetered on the brink of making a laughably inaccurate prediction and then plunged right in. What's the point of Beazley teetering on the brink of retirement for half a decade only to come back and hurl himself into the abyss of yesterday's cliches?

To hold a civil war you need two sides. Iraq fails to meet that minimum requirement. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – not an Iraqi, incidentally – has a few foreign jihadi, some enthusiastic head-hackers and a dwindling supply of suicide bombers, a job in which by definition it's hard to get people with experience. On election day, his guys bullied a kid with Down syndrome into taking the gig. You can't have a Sunni-Shia war because Zarqawi doesn't represent the Sunni. Meanwhile, in the face of his provocations, the Shia have been a model of restraint and discipline and political surefootedness. Beazley might learn a thing or two from them.

Granted, a footling suicide cult with no mass support will still blow up cars and burn buildings, and it's savvy enough to do so in parts of the country conveniently located so that Zarqawi's shills in the Western press corps don't have to stray far from their hotels tofilm it. Or as the internet satirist Scott Ott deftly summarised the coverage: "Iraqi Voting Disrupts News Reports of Bombings."

That's another sign that you're a mature, sophisticated democracy – when you've got media so bogged down in the Vietnam-like quagmire of their ancient Vietnam quagmire analogies that they're unable to drag themselves free, whatever happens. The election was "an act of folly in the eyes of so many Iraqis", pronounced a confident Robert Fisk, the beloved comic doom-monger. Care to pin down that so many a bit more precisely, Robert?

In his own pre-election message, Zarqawi denounced the "evil" of democracy and warned any Iraqis who went along with it that they'd be regarded as having gone over to the other side. Yet at some Sunni Triangle precincts there were reports of 40 per cent voter turnout – courageous men and women who were willing to defy the thugs and murderers in their own so-called stronghold.

That's not how Paul McGeough, The Sydney Morning Herald's man in Baghdad, sees things. Zarqawi may have issued an explicit threat against voting in the election, but according to McGeough yesterday, you weren't at risk of being killed for showing up but for staying away. "It was only a personal threat of violence that motivated some people to go to the polls." They came "only because of the gun at their backs".

How many would that be? Six million? Fourteen thousand? Couple of dozen? Hard to tell from McGeough's report. Perhaps he's just confused. Isn't it Australia where you're forced to vote whether you want to or not?

Three years ago, Jonathan Kay of Canada's National Post wrote that if Robert Mugabe turned up at an Arab League meeting he'd be the most democratically legitimate leader in the room. That's no longer true.

What happened on Sunday was a victory for the Iraqi people and a vindication for a relatively small group of Western politicians – most notably the much-maligned US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, whose faith in those Iraqi people turned out to be so much shrewder than the sneers of his detractors.

John Kerry is wrong. It's time for him and Ted Kennedy and Kim Beazley and Paul McGeough to stop under-hyping. If freedom isn't on the march, it's moving forward dramatically in a region notoriously inimical to it.

This weekend's election was a rebuke to the parochial condescension of the West's elites.

"These elections are a joke," Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle East history at the University of Michigan, told Reuters. Sorry, professor, the joke's on you. And the modern Middle East history is being made by the fledgling democracy of the new Iraq.

Mark Steyn is a columnist with Britain's Telegraph group and a regular contributor to The Australian's Opinion page.