From washingtonpost.com:
'Good Night': A Gray Era In Stark Black And White
By Stephen Hunter
Friday, October 7, 2005
In December 1948, the renowned broadcaster Edward R. Murrow went on the air to denounce the Red-hunters of the U.S. government who had hounded his friend and mentor Laurence Duggan, a former State Department employee, to suicide.
One can almost imagine the drama: The distinguished newsman, once the voice of blitzed London, hair slicked back, a nub of cigarette in his hand radiating vapors, face as rigid as an Old Testament elder, using that deep voice and crooning rhetoric to lambaste the puny minds of the House Un-American Activities Committee that had so besmirched Larry's good name that the man had leapt in despair from a 16th-floor window.
But you won't find it in "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's mounting of the dramatic confrontation between the estimable Murrow and the abrasive junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.
One can readily see why. Duggan, as it turned out, was a Soviet spy, code-named "19," then "Frank" and finally "Prince."
He was, moreover, one of many Soviet spies embedded in the U.S. government at the time.
That's not all Clooney leaves out in his account of the Murrow-McCarthy fight: He leaves out the Cold War, the hot war in Korea, the Venona decrypts that proved how sophisticated and exhaustive the Russian intelligence initiative against the American target was. He even leaves out McCarthy himself, relying on archival footage and sparing himself the ordeal of trying to imagine such a fellow as a human being. He also leaves out nuance, context, empathy, anything that suggests the larger truth that nothing is as simple as it seems. The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity.
Fundamentally, he refuses to acknowledge that, as Joseph Persico wrote in his New York Times review of the 1999 book that brought these realities out, Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev's "The Haunted Wood," "the hardest part of these revelations to accept, at least for those of us who deplored the over zealous Red-hunting of the late 40's and early 50's, is that the hunt rested on more substance than we cared to admit, the phony posturing of Senator Joseph McCarthy aside."
The result does a disservice to history: It suggests that McCarthy was an arbitrary sociopath disconnected from a larger issue. That he was just a bad Republican who liked to bully and destroy people out of his own pathology and he was smitten by the powerful moral force of a flawless crusader. Good whupped bad. Good hit bad upside the head. Good kicked butt. But nothing in real life is ever that simple, and to pretend that it is has to be a lie itself. That's the truth that should be spoken to the power that Clooney represents.
Thus the movie fails to apprehend the true enormity of McCarthy's crime. Not that he hounded a few lefties out of government or made a stink about the odd Red dentist who got a promotion at Fort Dix, but that he forever tarnished by association the reputations of the security services charged with keeping us safe from the actual -- yes, Virginia, there was such a thing -- Red menace. That probably did more to help the Soviet espionage initiative than any State Department docum ent that was ever filched for them.
Still, its simplistic premise aside, the movie is shrewdly made. As a director, Clooney (who wrote the script with actor Grant Heslov) seems to channel the techniques of live television drama of that era. He's like some Lumet or Frankenheimer wannabe who loves the big close-ups and stark lighting of television's golden age. The black-and-white cinematography, by Robert Elswit, captures the particular hard-edged electricity of those days. For some reason, the eye decodes black-and-white as more "realistic" than color, and the scheme here is especially beneficial to the overall verisimilitude.
And the movie's built around one extravagant performance: David Straithairn's. Clooney himself, with a few added pounds so that everyone could tell him how "committed" he was, plays Fred W. Friendly, Murrow's producer; he barely registers. A bunch of young actors -- Reed Diamond, Tate Donovan, Heslov, Robert Downey Jr. -- play reporters on the "See It Now" staff and CBS suits, all to little effect. A subplot, in which Downey's character, Joe Wershba, and a character played by Patricia Clarkson try to keep their marriage hidden from CBS, which banned such unions, comes to very little.
Really, only Strathairn as Murrow registers. Is this a performance or an impersonation? That's hard to call, because so in awe of Murrow is Clooney that he stays far outside. Murrow -- he must have had a sense of humor somewhere, huh? -- seems more like John Brown than anyone else, a moral reformer who is never less than 100 percent buttoned down. He looks like the kind of guy who never goes to the bathroom. There's something actually rather dislikable and creepy about someone who takes himself this seriously, and Clooney never lets us see another Ed Murrow. Did the guy drink, joke, pinch bottoms, get angry, root for a ball team, love his kids, read the funnies? You won't find out here.
Now and then Clooney does add a small recognizable moment in all the drama. We see the reluctant Murrow interviewing Liberace on his other network show, the showbiz-themed "Person to Person," and he asks him if there's a Mrs. Liberace in the near future. Oh, no, replies the sequined pianist, I haven't met the right gal yet. Strathairn, off the television camera, gives a little pained look, as if he realizes that while he crusades for the truth on "See It Now," here on "Person to Person" he's just another liar and fraud, playing a hoax on the public.
The movie might have been much more interesting if Clooney had made "Good Night, and Good Luck" -- the title is Murrow's famous sign-off, which probably isn't so famous anymore -- more like "Person to Person" and less like "See It Now."
Good Night, and Good Luck (95 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG for brief profanity
Friday, November 04, 2005
From FrontPageMagazine.com:
Paris Burning
By Robert Spencer
November 4, 2005
Riots have now continued for eight days in and around Paris. Thursday night, November 3, Muslim rioters burned 315 cars. In the previous week, they torched 177 vehicles and burned numerous businesses, a post office, and two schools. They have rampaged through twenty towns and shot at police and firemen. In an episode that summed up the failure of France’s efforts to create a domestic, domesticated Islam, when moderate Muslim leader Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Paris mosque, tried to restore calm, his car was pelted with stones and he had to rush away.
The riots began on October 27 when two Muslim teenagers ran from police who were checking identification papers — why they ran is as yet unclear. The police did not chase them, but evidently the teenagers thought they were being chased; they eventually hid in an electrical power sub-station, where they accidentally electrocuted themselves. That night young Muslims took to the streets for the first time, throwing rocks and bottles at police, burning cars, and vandalizing property. The next day rioters, throwing rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails, injured twenty-three police officers in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. The violence continued over the next few days: more destroyed vehicles and injured police officers. Then on Sunday, October 30, a tear gas shell hit a mosque, further enraging local Muslims; French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy stated somewhat cryptically, “I am, of course, available to the imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque.” Since then the riots have continued unabated, defying appeals for calm from French President Jacques Chirac and others. The crisis now threatens to swamp the French government.
Why have the riots happened? From many accounts one would think that the riots have been caused by France’s failure to implement Marxism. “The unrest,” AP explained, has highlighted the division between France’s big cities and their poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty.” Another AP story declared flatly that the riots were over “poor conditions in Paris-area housing projects.”
Reuters agreed with AP’s attribution of all the unrest to economic injustice, and added in a suggestion of racism: “The unrest in the northern and eastern suburbs, heavily populated by North African and black African minorities, have been fuelled by frustration among youths in the area over their failure to get jobs and recognition in French society.” Deutsche Presse Agentur called the high-rise public housing in the Paris suburbs “a long-time flashpoint of unemployment, crime and other social problems.”
One might get the impression from this that France is governed by top-hatted, cigar-smoking capitalists, building their fortunes on the backs of the poor, rather than by socialists and quasi-socialists who have actually strained the economy by spending huge amounts of money on health and welfare programs. Nor does the idea that the rioting has been caused by economic inequalities explain why Catholics and others who are poor in France have not joined the Muslims who are rioting. Of course, all the news agencies have either omitted or mentioned only in passing that the rioters are Muslims at all. The casual reader would not be able to escape the impression that what is happening in France is all about economics — and race.
The areas hardest hit by the riots, according to Reuters, are “home to North African and black African minorities that feel excluded from French society.” AP shed some light on this feeling of exclusion: “the violence also cast doubt on the success of France’s model of seeking to integrate its large immigrant community — its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe’s largest — by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.”
So evidently France’s failure to live up to its policy of playing down the differences between ethnic groups has bred the simmering anger that has now boiled over in the riots. However, in fact France has done just the opposite of playing down the differences between ethnic groups. In her seminal Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, historian Bat Ye’or details a series of agreements between the European Union and the Arab League that guaranteed that Muslim immigrants in Europe would not be compelled in any way to adapt “to the customs of the host countries.” On the contrary, the Euro-Arab Dialogue’s Hamburg Symposium of 1983, to take just one of many examples, recommended that non-Muslim Europeans be made “more aware of the cultural background of migrants, by promoting cultural activities of the immigrant communities or ‘supplying adequate information on the culture of the migrant communities in the school curricula.’” Not only that: “Access to the mass media had to be facilitated to the migrants in order to ensure ‘regular information in their own language about their own culture as well as about the conditions of life in the host country.”[1]
The European Union has implemented such recommendations for decades — so far from playing down the differences between ethnic groups, they have instead stood by approvingly while immigrants formed non-assimilated Islamic enclaves within Europe. Indeed, as Bat Ye’or demonstrates, they have assured the Arab League in multiple agreements that they would aid in the creation and maintenance of such enclaves. Ignorance of the jihad ideology among European officials has allowed that ideology to spread in those enclaves, unchecked until relatively recently.
Consequently, among a generation of Muslims born in Europe, significant numbers have nothing but contempt and disdain for their native lands, and allegiance only to the Muslim umma and the lands of their parents’ birth. Those who continue to arrive in Europe from Muslim countries are encouraged by the isolation, self-imposed and other-abetted, of the Islamic communities in Europe to hold to the same attitudes. The Arab European League, a Muslim advocacy group operating in Belgium and the Netherlands, states as part of its “vision and philosophy” that “we believe in a multicultural society as a social and political model where different cultures coexist with equal rights under the law.” It strongly rejects for Muslims any idea of assimilation or integration into European societies: “We do not want to assimilate and we do not want to be stuck somewhere in the middle. We want to foster our own identity and culture while being law abiding and worthy citizens of the countries where we live. In order to achieve that it is imperative for us to teach our children the Arabic language and history and the Islamic faith. We will resist any attempt to strip us of our right to our own cultural and religious identity, as we believe it is one of the most fundamental human rights.” AEL founder Dyab Abou Jahjah, who was himself arrested in November 2002 and charged with inciting Muslims in Antwerp to riot (Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that the AEL was “trying to terrorize the city”[2]), has declared: “Assimilation is cultural rape. It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others.” He implied that European Muslims had a right to bring the ideology of jihad and Sharia to Europe, complaining that in Europe “I could still eat certain dishes from the Middle East, but I cannot have certain thoughts that are based on ideologies and ideas from the Middle East.”
What kind of ideologies? Perhaps Hani Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna and brother of the famed self-proclaimed moderate Muslim spokesman Tariq Ramadan, gave a hint when he defended the traditional Islamic Sharia punishment of stoning for adultery in the Paris journal Le Monde. In Denmark, politician Fatima Shah echoed the same sentiments in November 2004. That same month, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who had made a film, Submission, about the oppression of women by Islamic law, was murdered in Holland by a Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri. Bouyeri later declared in court: “I did what I did purely out my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted.” In other words, his problem was religious, not racial: Van Gogh had blasphemed Islam, and so according to Islamic law he had to die. Significantly, Bouyeri maintained during his trial that he did not recognize the authority of the Dutch court, but only of the law of Islam.
How many European Muslims share the sentiments of Mohammed Bouyeri? How many of these are rioting this week in Paris? Alleviating Muslim unemployment and poverty will not ultimately do anything to alter this rejection of European values by growing numbers of people who are only geographically Europeans. And the problem cannot be ignored. For France is not alone: Muslims in Århus, Denmark have also been rioting this week. And in France, Sarkozy recently revealed that this week’s riots are just a particularly virulent flare-up of an ongoing pattern of violence: he told Le Monde that twenty to forty cars are set afire nightly in Paris’ restive Muslim suburbs, and no fewer than nine thousand police cars have been stoned since the beginning of 2005.
Blame for the riots in France has thus far focused on Sarkozy’s tough talk about ending this violence. On October 19 he declared of the suburbs that “they have to be cleaned — we’re going to make them as clean as a whistle.” Six days after this, Muslim protestors threw stones and bottles at him when he visited the suburb of Argenteuil. He has been roundly criticized for calling the rioters “scum”; one of them responded, “We’re not scum. We’re human beings, but we’re neglected.” However, as a solution the same man recommended only more neglect, saying of the Paris riot police: “If they didn’t come here, into our area, nothing would happen. If they come here it’s to provoke us, so we provoke back.” Others complained of rough treatment they have received since 9/11 from police searching for terrorists: “It’s the way they stop and search people, kneeing them between the legs as they put them up against the wall. They get students mixed up with the worst offenders, yet these young people have done nothing wrong.”
But of course, all these problems are exacerbated by the non-assimilation policy that both the French government and the Muslim population have for so long pursued: the rioters are part of a population that has never considered itself French. Nor do French officials seem able or willing to face that this is the core of their problem today. It is likely that the riots will result only in intensification of the problems that caused them: if French officials offer an accommodation to Muslims, it will probably result only in further intensification of the Islamic identity, often in its most radical manifestations, among French Muslims. The French response to the riots is likely to unfold along the lines of a decision by officials in Holland last May: they declined to ban a book called De weg van de Moslim (The Way of the Muslim), even though it calls for homosexuals to be thrown head first off tall buildings. The Amsterdam city council did not want to contravene “the freedom to express opinions.”
That decision is a small example of what the Paris riots demonstrate on a large scale: the abject failure of the multiculturalist philosophy that disparate groups can coexist within a nation without any idea that they must share at least some basic values. The French are paying the price today for blithely assuming that France could absorb a population holding values vastly different from that of the host population without negative consequences for either.
That French officials show no sign, on the eighth day of the Paris riots, of recognizing that this clash of values is the heart of the problem only guarantees that before they will be able to say that their difficulties with their Muslim population are behind them, many more cars will be torched, many more buildings burned, and many more lives destroyed.
Notes:
[1] Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. P. 97.
[2] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Ex-Hezbollah charged with inciting rioting,” London Daily Telegraph, November 30, 2002.
Paris Burning
By Robert Spencer
November 4, 2005
Riots have now continued for eight days in and around Paris. Thursday night, November 3, Muslim rioters burned 315 cars. In the previous week, they torched 177 vehicles and burned numerous businesses, a post office, and two schools. They have rampaged through twenty towns and shot at police and firemen. In an episode that summed up the failure of France’s efforts to create a domestic, domesticated Islam, when moderate Muslim leader Dalil Boubakeur, head of the Paris mosque, tried to restore calm, his car was pelted with stones and he had to rush away.
The riots began on October 27 when two Muslim teenagers ran from police who were checking identification papers — why they ran is as yet unclear. The police did not chase them, but evidently the teenagers thought they were being chased; they eventually hid in an electrical power sub-station, where they accidentally electrocuted themselves. That night young Muslims took to the streets for the first time, throwing rocks and bottles at police, burning cars, and vandalizing property. The next day rioters, throwing rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails, injured twenty-three police officers in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. The violence continued over the next few days: more destroyed vehicles and injured police officers. Then on Sunday, October 30, a tear gas shell hit a mosque, further enraging local Muslims; French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy stated somewhat cryptically, “I am, of course, available to the imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque.” Since then the riots have continued unabated, defying appeals for calm from French President Jacques Chirac and others. The crisis now threatens to swamp the French government.
Why have the riots happened? From many accounts one would think that the riots have been caused by France’s failure to implement Marxism. “The unrest,” AP explained, has highlighted the division between France’s big cities and their poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty.” Another AP story declared flatly that the riots were over “poor conditions in Paris-area housing projects.”
Reuters agreed with AP’s attribution of all the unrest to economic injustice, and added in a suggestion of racism: “The unrest in the northern and eastern suburbs, heavily populated by North African and black African minorities, have been fuelled by frustration among youths in the area over their failure to get jobs and recognition in French society.” Deutsche Presse Agentur called the high-rise public housing in the Paris suburbs “a long-time flashpoint of unemployment, crime and other social problems.”
One might get the impression from this that France is governed by top-hatted, cigar-smoking capitalists, building their fortunes on the backs of the poor, rather than by socialists and quasi-socialists who have actually strained the economy by spending huge amounts of money on health and welfare programs. Nor does the idea that the rioting has been caused by economic inequalities explain why Catholics and others who are poor in France have not joined the Muslims who are rioting. Of course, all the news agencies have either omitted or mentioned only in passing that the rioters are Muslims at all. The casual reader would not be able to escape the impression that what is happening in France is all about economics — and race.
The areas hardest hit by the riots, according to Reuters, are “home to North African and black African minorities that feel excluded from French society.” AP shed some light on this feeling of exclusion: “the violence also cast doubt on the success of France’s model of seeking to integrate its large immigrant community — its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe’s largest — by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.”
So evidently France’s failure to live up to its policy of playing down the differences between ethnic groups has bred the simmering anger that has now boiled over in the riots. However, in fact France has done just the opposite of playing down the differences between ethnic groups. In her seminal Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, historian Bat Ye’or details a series of agreements between the European Union and the Arab League that guaranteed that Muslim immigrants in Europe would not be compelled in any way to adapt “to the customs of the host countries.” On the contrary, the Euro-Arab Dialogue’s Hamburg Symposium of 1983, to take just one of many examples, recommended that non-Muslim Europeans be made “more aware of the cultural background of migrants, by promoting cultural activities of the immigrant communities or ‘supplying adequate information on the culture of the migrant communities in the school curricula.’” Not only that: “Access to the mass media had to be facilitated to the migrants in order to ensure ‘regular information in their own language about their own culture as well as about the conditions of life in the host country.”[1]
The European Union has implemented such recommendations for decades — so far from playing down the differences between ethnic groups, they have instead stood by approvingly while immigrants formed non-assimilated Islamic enclaves within Europe. Indeed, as Bat Ye’or demonstrates, they have assured the Arab League in multiple agreements that they would aid in the creation and maintenance of such enclaves. Ignorance of the jihad ideology among European officials has allowed that ideology to spread in those enclaves, unchecked until relatively recently.
Consequently, among a generation of Muslims born in Europe, significant numbers have nothing but contempt and disdain for their native lands, and allegiance only to the Muslim umma and the lands of their parents’ birth. Those who continue to arrive in Europe from Muslim countries are encouraged by the isolation, self-imposed and other-abetted, of the Islamic communities in Europe to hold to the same attitudes. The Arab European League, a Muslim advocacy group operating in Belgium and the Netherlands, states as part of its “vision and philosophy” that “we believe in a multicultural society as a social and political model where different cultures coexist with equal rights under the law.” It strongly rejects for Muslims any idea of assimilation or integration into European societies: “We do not want to assimilate and we do not want to be stuck somewhere in the middle. We want to foster our own identity and culture while being law abiding and worthy citizens of the countries where we live. In order to achieve that it is imperative for us to teach our children the Arabic language and history and the Islamic faith. We will resist any attempt to strip us of our right to our own cultural and religious identity, as we believe it is one of the most fundamental human rights.” AEL founder Dyab Abou Jahjah, who was himself arrested in November 2002 and charged with inciting Muslims in Antwerp to riot (Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said that the AEL was “trying to terrorize the city”[2]), has declared: “Assimilation is cultural rape. It means renouncing your identity, becoming like the others.” He implied that European Muslims had a right to bring the ideology of jihad and Sharia to Europe, complaining that in Europe “I could still eat certain dishes from the Middle East, but I cannot have certain thoughts that are based on ideologies and ideas from the Middle East.”
What kind of ideologies? Perhaps Hani Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna and brother of the famed self-proclaimed moderate Muslim spokesman Tariq Ramadan, gave a hint when he defended the traditional Islamic Sharia punishment of stoning for adultery in the Paris journal Le Monde. In Denmark, politician Fatima Shah echoed the same sentiments in November 2004. That same month, filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who had made a film, Submission, about the oppression of women by Islamic law, was murdered in Holland by a Muslim, Mohammed Bouyeri. Bouyeri later declared in court: “I did what I did purely out my beliefs. I want you to know that I acted out of conviction and not that I took his life because he was Dutch or because I was Moroccan and felt insulted.” In other words, his problem was religious, not racial: Van Gogh had blasphemed Islam, and so according to Islamic law he had to die. Significantly, Bouyeri maintained during his trial that he did not recognize the authority of the Dutch court, but only of the law of Islam.
How many European Muslims share the sentiments of Mohammed Bouyeri? How many of these are rioting this week in Paris? Alleviating Muslim unemployment and poverty will not ultimately do anything to alter this rejection of European values by growing numbers of people who are only geographically Europeans. And the problem cannot be ignored. For France is not alone: Muslims in Århus, Denmark have also been rioting this week. And in France, Sarkozy recently revealed that this week’s riots are just a particularly virulent flare-up of an ongoing pattern of violence: he told Le Monde that twenty to forty cars are set afire nightly in Paris’ restive Muslim suburbs, and no fewer than nine thousand police cars have been stoned since the beginning of 2005.
Blame for the riots in France has thus far focused on Sarkozy’s tough talk about ending this violence. On October 19 he declared of the suburbs that “they have to be cleaned — we’re going to make them as clean as a whistle.” Six days after this, Muslim protestors threw stones and bottles at him when he visited the suburb of Argenteuil. He has been roundly criticized for calling the rioters “scum”; one of them responded, “We’re not scum. We’re human beings, but we’re neglected.” However, as a solution the same man recommended only more neglect, saying of the Paris riot police: “If they didn’t come here, into our area, nothing would happen. If they come here it’s to provoke us, so we provoke back.” Others complained of rough treatment they have received since 9/11 from police searching for terrorists: “It’s the way they stop and search people, kneeing them between the legs as they put them up against the wall. They get students mixed up with the worst offenders, yet these young people have done nothing wrong.”
But of course, all these problems are exacerbated by the non-assimilation policy that both the French government and the Muslim population have for so long pursued: the rioters are part of a population that has never considered itself French. Nor do French officials seem able or willing to face that this is the core of their problem today. It is likely that the riots will result only in intensification of the problems that caused them: if French officials offer an accommodation to Muslims, it will probably result only in further intensification of the Islamic identity, often in its most radical manifestations, among French Muslims. The French response to the riots is likely to unfold along the lines of a decision by officials in Holland last May: they declined to ban a book called De weg van de Moslim (The Way of the Muslim), even though it calls for homosexuals to be thrown head first off tall buildings. The Amsterdam city council did not want to contravene “the freedom to express opinions.”
That decision is a small example of what the Paris riots demonstrate on a large scale: the abject failure of the multiculturalist philosophy that disparate groups can coexist within a nation without any idea that they must share at least some basic values. The French are paying the price today for blithely assuming that France could absorb a population holding values vastly different from that of the host population without negative consequences for either.
That French officials show no sign, on the eighth day of the Paris riots, of recognizing that this clash of values is the heart of the problem only guarantees that before they will be able to say that their difficulties with their Muslim population are behind them, many more cars will be torched, many more buildings burned, and many more lives destroyed.
Notes:
[1] Bat Ye’or, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005. P. 97.
[2] Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Ex-Hezbollah charged with inciting rioting,” London Daily Telegraph, November 30, 2002.
Asking the Relevant Questions About Alito
By Charles Krauthammer
November 4, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Pop quiz: Which of the following abortion regulations is more restrictive, more burdensome, more likely to lead more women to forgo abortion?
(a) Requiring a minor to get the informed consent of her parents, or to get a judge to approve the abortion.
(b) Requiring a married woman to sign a form saying that she notified her husband.
Can any reasonable person have any doubt? A minor is intrinsically far more subject to the whims, anger, punishment, economic control and retribution of a parent. And the minor is required to get both parents involved in the process and to get them to agree to the abortion.
The married woman just has to inform her husband. Even less than that. She just has to sign a form saying that she informed him. No one checks. Moreover, under the Pennsylvania law I draw my example from, she could even forgo notification if she claimed that (1) he was not the father, (2) he could not be found, (3) he raped her, or (4) she had reason to believe he might physically harm her. What prosecutor on earth would subsequently dare try to prove to a jury that, say, she actually had no such fear of harm?
Remember. The question is not whether (a) or (b) is the wiser restriction. The only relevant question is which is more likely to discourage the woman from getting an abortion.
The answer is obvious.
Why is this the relevant question? Because when in 1991 Judge Samuel Alito was asked to rule in Planned Parenthood v. Casey on the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's spousal notification requirement, Supreme Court precedents on abortion had held that ``two-parent consent requirements'' for a juvenile with ``a judicial bypass option'' do not constitute an ``undue burden'' and thus were constitutional. By any logic, therefore, spousal notification, which is far less burdensome, must also be constitutional -- based not on Alito's own preferences, but on the Supreme Court's own precedents.
This may all seem arcane, but it requires slogging through arcana to see just how dishonest, disreputable and disgraceful is the charge, trumpeted by just about every liberal interest group, that Alito is so extreme and insensitive to women's needs that he supports spousal notification for abortion.
Alito's Casey opinion no more tells you whether he ``supports'' the policy of spousal notification than whether he likes foie gras with his pudding. The only thing it tells you is that based on scrupulous parsing of Supreme Court precedents -- or more particularly, of Sandra Day O'Connor's precedents on permissible restrictions on abortion -- he concluded that spousal notification met the court's own standard for constitutionality.
The O'Connor standard was that the law could not impose an ``undue burden.'' What did that mean? She spelled it out and set the bar pretty high. A state regulation that ``may 'inhibit' abortions to some degree'' was not enough to create an ``undue burden.'' It required more. It required ``absolute obstacles or severe limitations on the abortion decision.''
So how to apply this test? Alito said: Let's see how the Supreme Court applied it. The court had found in previous decisions that there was no undue burden when you require a minor to notify or get consent from both parents, or to get judicial authorization. So surely, spousal notification, which is obviously less burdensome, was also constitutional.
Ah, say the critics, but when Casey ultimately came up to the Supreme Court, O'Connor disagreed with Alito and found that spousal notification is indeed an undue burden.
To which I say: Such is Alito's reward for having tortuously tried to follow O'Connor's logic. Brilliant Alito is, but alas not brilliant enough to divine O'Connor's next zigzag -- after Alito had blown hundreds of neurons trying to figure out the logic of her past (pre-Casey) rulings.
In the coming days you will hear that Alito ``supports'' strip searches of 10-year-olds and the private possession of machine guns. The Brady anti-gun campaign has already called Alito ``Machine Gun Sammy." You will also hear that he is hostile to minorities, immigrants, women, workers, the disabled, the environment ... you name it. These claims are based on the same distortion that we see in attacks on Alito's abortion ruling in Casey -- the deliberate confusion of a constitutional judgment (almost invariably based on the Supreme Court's own precedents) with a personal policy preference.
It was disgraceful when that same deliberate distortion was used in television ads to accuse John Roberts of ``supporting'' people who blow up abortion clinics. It remains disgraceful today.
By Charles Krauthammer
November 4, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Pop quiz: Which of the following abortion regulations is more restrictive, more burdensome, more likely to lead more women to forgo abortion?
(a) Requiring a minor to get the informed consent of her parents, or to get a judge to approve the abortion.
(b) Requiring a married woman to sign a form saying that she notified her husband.
Can any reasonable person have any doubt? A minor is intrinsically far more subject to the whims, anger, punishment, economic control and retribution of a parent. And the minor is required to get both parents involved in the process and to get them to agree to the abortion.
The married woman just has to inform her husband. Even less than that. She just has to sign a form saying that she informed him. No one checks. Moreover, under the Pennsylvania law I draw my example from, she could even forgo notification if she claimed that (1) he was not the father, (2) he could not be found, (3) he raped her, or (4) she had reason to believe he might physically harm her. What prosecutor on earth would subsequently dare try to prove to a jury that, say, she actually had no such fear of harm?
Remember. The question is not whether (a) or (b) is the wiser restriction. The only relevant question is which is more likely to discourage the woman from getting an abortion.
The answer is obvious.
Why is this the relevant question? Because when in 1991 Judge Samuel Alito was asked to rule in Planned Parenthood v. Casey on the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's spousal notification requirement, Supreme Court precedents on abortion had held that ``two-parent consent requirements'' for a juvenile with ``a judicial bypass option'' do not constitute an ``undue burden'' and thus were constitutional. By any logic, therefore, spousal notification, which is far less burdensome, must also be constitutional -- based not on Alito's own preferences, but on the Supreme Court's own precedents.
This may all seem arcane, but it requires slogging through arcana to see just how dishonest, disreputable and disgraceful is the charge, trumpeted by just about every liberal interest group, that Alito is so extreme and insensitive to women's needs that he supports spousal notification for abortion.
Alito's Casey opinion no more tells you whether he ``supports'' the policy of spousal notification than whether he likes foie gras with his pudding. The only thing it tells you is that based on scrupulous parsing of Supreme Court precedents -- or more particularly, of Sandra Day O'Connor's precedents on permissible restrictions on abortion -- he concluded that spousal notification met the court's own standard for constitutionality.
The O'Connor standard was that the law could not impose an ``undue burden.'' What did that mean? She spelled it out and set the bar pretty high. A state regulation that ``may 'inhibit' abortions to some degree'' was not enough to create an ``undue burden.'' It required more. It required ``absolute obstacles or severe limitations on the abortion decision.''
So how to apply this test? Alito said: Let's see how the Supreme Court applied it. The court had found in previous decisions that there was no undue burden when you require a minor to notify or get consent from both parents, or to get judicial authorization. So surely, spousal notification, which is obviously less burdensome, was also constitutional.
Ah, say the critics, but when Casey ultimately came up to the Supreme Court, O'Connor disagreed with Alito and found that spousal notification is indeed an undue burden.
To which I say: Such is Alito's reward for having tortuously tried to follow O'Connor's logic. Brilliant Alito is, but alas not brilliant enough to divine O'Connor's next zigzag -- after Alito had blown hundreds of neurons trying to figure out the logic of her past (pre-Casey) rulings.
In the coming days you will hear that Alito ``supports'' strip searches of 10-year-olds and the private possession of machine guns. The Brady anti-gun campaign has already called Alito ``Machine Gun Sammy." You will also hear that he is hostile to minorities, immigrants, women, workers, the disabled, the environment ... you name it. These claims are based on the same distortion that we see in attacks on Alito's abortion ruling in Casey -- the deliberate confusion of a constitutional judgment (almost invariably based on the Supreme Court's own precedents) with a personal policy preference.
It was disgraceful when that same deliberate distortion was used in television ads to accuse John Roberts of ``supporting'' people who blow up abortion clinics. It remains disgraceful today.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
From National Review Online:
Islam, Democracy & Assimilation
By Andrew C. McCarthy
A year after the van Gogh murder,
Francis Fukuyama asks some of the hard questions.
On the one-year anniversary of the brutal, Euro-shattering murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, Prince Charles — future sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and possessed as ever of that special knack for doing the right thing at the right time — has come to the United States to lecture President Bush about America's "confrontational" approach to Islam.
The visit comes as the United States, having freed 50 million Muslims from tyranny (with stalwart help, it must be added, from our flinty British allies) assesses the progress of is project to democratize the Middle East. It also comes fresh from last week's series of Iftaar dinners, at which official Washington now annually, and with all due ostentation, marks the end of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar. Including one such event at which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an effusion of treacle startling even by Foggy Bottom's cloying standards, elevated Islam from its previous heady status of "religion of peace" to an even loftier — if rigorously unexamined — station in our public discourse: "Religion of love and peace."
The same week, of course, also saw the Iranian mullahs' new frontman, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reiterate Khomeini's promise that Israel would be destroyed (a goal he sees "attainable" in the "very" short term). As if that were not enough, we further witnessed a suicide bombing by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Israeli coastal city of Hadera, killing five innocents and wounding dozens — an attack staged from the West Bank, the cornerstone of the Palestinian State that is the obsessively coveted pot of gold at the end of the Bush administration's roadmap rainbow.
With "love" like this, it will be intriguing to hear what His Royal Highness supposes a less affectionate disposition might look like. In any event, the president and his foreign service would do well to look elsewhere for the lessons to be drawn from Europe. Francis Fukuyama would be an excellent source to start with.
Professor Fukuyama has a very insightful op-ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. The administration and thinkers like Natan Sharansky prioritize conversion of the Islamic world to democracy in the conceit that it will increase our security. Yet, there's much more to it than that. Fukuyama points out, compellingly, that the threat posed by Islamism spawned inside democratic countries themselves, in Europe in particular, is at least as perilous as that coming from Muslim countries. And this is, of course, borne out — from van Gogh, to Madrid, to London.
He argues that in the Muslim world, the impulse toward radicalism is restrained since one's Islamic identity is more of a cultural phenomenon than one driven by deeply held personal belief. As Fukuyama puts it, "In a traditional Muslim country, your religious identity is not a matter of choice; you receive it, along with your social status, customs and habits, even your future marriage partner, from your social environment. In such a society there is no confusion as to who you are, since your identity is given to you and sanctioned by all of the society's institutions, from the family to the mosque to the state."
To the contrary, when Muslims emigrate to the West, those "social supports" are gone and identity is up for grabs. Enter the European democratic welfare state. It presents the perfect storm for radicalizing the young and unmoored: an exclusionary nationalism lurking under all the cant about post-national "Europeanness"; hyper-intrusive labor regulation that causes high immigrant unemployment; and multiculturalist policies that give group rights pride of place over individual freedom, ghettoizing the immigrant population into further isolation from the surrounding society.
The result? Fukuyama opines:
It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions. Radical Islamism tells them exactly who they are — respected members of a global Muslim umma to which they can belong despite their lives in lands of unbelief. Religion is no longer supported, as in a true Muslim society, through conformity to a host of external social customs and observances; rather it is more a question of inward belief.
And it is inward belief as defined by the most extremist, violent elements.
Fukuyama's conclusion: Democracy is desirable for its own sake, but it is not a solution — at least in the short term — to the problem of Islamic radicalism. Moreover, in the West, where democracy already reigns supreme, there is no peace without assimilation.
Easier said than done. But the doing can't start without the saying, and the self-examination it prompts. On that score, two points.
First, Fukuyama rightly contends that this assimilation must begin with an end to fractious multiculturalism. He concludes, however, that this means the societies themselves must change, if not fundamentally than at least significantly. Countries, he declares, "need to reformulate their definitions of national identity to be more accepting of people from non-Western backgrounds."
I'm all for acceptance, but I respectfully disagree. Immigrants presumably come to a new place because it is attractive to them as is, not because they seek to reform it. More desirable would be real gate-keeping immigration policies that admitted only those of a mind to assimilate to the home culture, not the other way around. If that means people who would otherwise emigrate end up remaining in their home countries, is that such a bad thing? As Fukuyama posits, in those places — if they are Islamic countries — a social-support system exists that tends against mass radicalism (even if, as history has shown, it has not been able to prevent pockets of radicalism, and, occasionally, dominant radicalism in places like Sudan and Afghanistan under the Taliban).
Second, perhaps understandably, Fukuyama does not confront the bottom-line logic of his thesis. Why is it that Islamic culture tends less toward radicalism when Muslim identity is more of a predetermined social reality (as he contends it is in the Islamic countries), than when it is a deeply held belief system that must transcend its non-Muslim surroundings to thrive (as is the case in the West)?
We've been bombarded with a lot of this "let's not go there" insouciance since 9/11. President Bush, while smoke was still billowing from Ground Zero, insisted that the answer to Islamic radicalism was somehow to be found outside Islam — that 19 terrorists had "hijacked a great religion." Just a week ago, during her "religion of love" encomium, Secretary Rice maintained: "We in America know the benevolence that is at the heart of Islam."
That all sounds very nice. But let's leave aside for the moment that if such things were as routinely proclaimed by high government officials about Christianity or Judaism the ACLU would be stampeding the federal courts with lawsuits decrying Establishment Clause violations. What's the evidence that what the administration claims is true?
At roughly the same time as last week's contrasting Ramadan speeches from Rice and Ahmadinejad, the imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, was in Dubai being honored by his fellow Muslims with the Islamic Personality of the Year Award. As Don Feder observes, it was not long ago that Al-Sudais was heard praying "that Allah would 'terminate' the Jews, who he benevolently called 'the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys' (the latter comes from the Koran). On other occasions Al-Sudais referred to Jews as 'evil,' a 'continuum of deceit,' 'tyrannical' and 'treacherous.'"
In the Muslim ghettoes of democratic Europe, the likes of Al-Sudais are far more influential than Locke or Burke or Montesquieu. Nonetheless, in sorting out the militants from the moderates, we've made a taboo of the obvious question: Is there something about Islam?
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Islam, Democracy & Assimilation
By Andrew C. McCarthy
A year after the van Gogh murder,
Francis Fukuyama asks some of the hard questions.
On the one-year anniversary of the brutal, Euro-shattering murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, Prince Charles — future sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and possessed as ever of that special knack for doing the right thing at the right time — has come to the United States to lecture President Bush about America's "confrontational" approach to Islam.
The visit comes as the United States, having freed 50 million Muslims from tyranny (with stalwart help, it must be added, from our flinty British allies) assesses the progress of is project to democratize the Middle East. It also comes fresh from last week's series of Iftaar dinners, at which official Washington now annually, and with all due ostentation, marks the end of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar. Including one such event at which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an effusion of treacle startling even by Foggy Bottom's cloying standards, elevated Islam from its previous heady status of "religion of peace" to an even loftier — if rigorously unexamined — station in our public discourse: "Religion of love and peace."
The same week, of course, also saw the Iranian mullahs' new frontman, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reiterate Khomeini's promise that Israel would be destroyed (a goal he sees "attainable" in the "very" short term). As if that were not enough, we further witnessed a suicide bombing by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Israeli coastal city of Hadera, killing five innocents and wounding dozens — an attack staged from the West Bank, the cornerstone of the Palestinian State that is the obsessively coveted pot of gold at the end of the Bush administration's roadmap rainbow.
With "love" like this, it will be intriguing to hear what His Royal Highness supposes a less affectionate disposition might look like. In any event, the president and his foreign service would do well to look elsewhere for the lessons to be drawn from Europe. Francis Fukuyama would be an excellent source to start with.
Professor Fukuyama has a very insightful op-ed in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. The administration and thinkers like Natan Sharansky prioritize conversion of the Islamic world to democracy in the conceit that it will increase our security. Yet, there's much more to it than that. Fukuyama points out, compellingly, that the threat posed by Islamism spawned inside democratic countries themselves, in Europe in particular, is at least as perilous as that coming from Muslim countries. And this is, of course, borne out — from van Gogh, to Madrid, to London.
He argues that in the Muslim world, the impulse toward radicalism is restrained since one's Islamic identity is more of a cultural phenomenon than one driven by deeply held personal belief. As Fukuyama puts it, "In a traditional Muslim country, your religious identity is not a matter of choice; you receive it, along with your social status, customs and habits, even your future marriage partner, from your social environment. In such a society there is no confusion as to who you are, since your identity is given to you and sanctioned by all of the society's institutions, from the family to the mosque to the state."
To the contrary, when Muslims emigrate to the West, those "social supports" are gone and identity is up for grabs. Enter the European democratic welfare state. It presents the perfect storm for radicalizing the young and unmoored: an exclusionary nationalism lurking under all the cant about post-national "Europeanness"; hyper-intrusive labor regulation that causes high immigrant unemployment; and multiculturalist policies that give group rights pride of place over individual freedom, ghettoizing the immigrant population into further isolation from the surrounding society.
The result? Fukuyama opines:
It is in this context that someone like Osama bin Laden appears, offering young converts a universalistic, pure version of Islam that has been stripped of its local saints, customs and traditions. Radical Islamism tells them exactly who they are — respected members of a global Muslim umma to which they can belong despite their lives in lands of unbelief. Religion is no longer supported, as in a true Muslim society, through conformity to a host of external social customs and observances; rather it is more a question of inward belief.
And it is inward belief as defined by the most extremist, violent elements.
Fukuyama's conclusion: Democracy is desirable for its own sake, but it is not a solution — at least in the short term — to the problem of Islamic radicalism. Moreover, in the West, where democracy already reigns supreme, there is no peace without assimilation.
Easier said than done. But the doing can't start without the saying, and the self-examination it prompts. On that score, two points.
First, Fukuyama rightly contends that this assimilation must begin with an end to fractious multiculturalism. He concludes, however, that this means the societies themselves must change, if not fundamentally than at least significantly. Countries, he declares, "need to reformulate their definitions of national identity to be more accepting of people from non-Western backgrounds."
I'm all for acceptance, but I respectfully disagree. Immigrants presumably come to a new place because it is attractive to them as is, not because they seek to reform it. More desirable would be real gate-keeping immigration policies that admitted only those of a mind to assimilate to the home culture, not the other way around. If that means people who would otherwise emigrate end up remaining in their home countries, is that such a bad thing? As Fukuyama posits, in those places — if they are Islamic countries — a social-support system exists that tends against mass radicalism (even if, as history has shown, it has not been able to prevent pockets of radicalism, and, occasionally, dominant radicalism in places like Sudan and Afghanistan under the Taliban).
Second, perhaps understandably, Fukuyama does not confront the bottom-line logic of his thesis. Why is it that Islamic culture tends less toward radicalism when Muslim identity is more of a predetermined social reality (as he contends it is in the Islamic countries), than when it is a deeply held belief system that must transcend its non-Muslim surroundings to thrive (as is the case in the West)?
We've been bombarded with a lot of this "let's not go there" insouciance since 9/11. President Bush, while smoke was still billowing from Ground Zero, insisted that the answer to Islamic radicalism was somehow to be found outside Islam — that 19 terrorists had "hijacked a great religion." Just a week ago, during her "religion of love" encomium, Secretary Rice maintained: "We in America know the benevolence that is at the heart of Islam."
That all sounds very nice. But let's leave aside for the moment that if such things were as routinely proclaimed by high government officials about Christianity or Judaism the ACLU would be stampeding the federal courts with lawsuits decrying Establishment Clause violations. What's the evidence that what the administration claims is true?
At roughly the same time as last week's contrasting Ramadan speeches from Rice and Ahmadinejad, the imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, was in Dubai being honored by his fellow Muslims with the Islamic Personality of the Year Award. As Don Feder observes, it was not long ago that Al-Sudais was heard praying "that Allah would 'terminate' the Jews, who he benevolently called 'the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys' (the latter comes from the Koran). On other occasions Al-Sudais referred to Jews as 'evil,' a 'continuum of deceit,' 'tyrannical' and 'treacherous.'"
In the Muslim ghettoes of democratic Europe, the likes of Al-Sudais are far more influential than Locke or Burke or Montesquieu. Nonetheless, in sorting out the militants from the moderates, we've made a taboo of the obvious question: Is there something about Islam?
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
From the UK Telegraph:
Confrontation is a good thing
By Mark Steyn
According to The Sunday Telegraph, on this week's whirlwind tour of the Great Satan, the Prince of Wales "will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam…because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11". His Royal Highness apparently finds the Bush approach to Islam "too confrontational".
If the Prince wants to take a few examples of the non-confrontational approach with him to the White House, here's a couple pulled at random from the last week's news: the president of Iran called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Kofi Annan expressed his "dismay".
Excellent. Struck the perfect non-confrontational tone. Were the Iranian nuclear programme a little more advanced and they'd actually wiped Israel off the map, the secretary-general might have felt obliged to be more confrontational and express his "deep concern".
In Sulawesi, Indonesia, three Christian girls walking home from school were beheaded.
"It is unclear what was behind the attack," reported the BBC, scrupulously non-confrontationally.
In the Australian state of Victoria, reports the Herald Sun, "police are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits". Tough luck for us infidel wife-beaters, but admirably non-confrontational Islam-wise.
Having followed the last Prince of Wales in his taste for older divorcées, His Royal Highness seems to be emulating Edward VIII on the geopolitical front, too, and carelessly aligning himself with the wrong side on the central challenge of the age. It's true that Mr Bush does not have the Prince's bulging Rolodex of bin Laden siblings and doesn't seem to get the same kick out of climbing into the old Lawrence-of-Arabia get-up for dinner with them: for His Highness, the excitement is in tents. But Bush has liberated 50 million Muslims from tyrannous regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and, if he was in the mood to be really confrontational, he'd tell Charles to stick it up his djellaba.
Sadly, even a neocon warmonger can't get confrontational over every nickel 'n' dime emissary passing through the office, and the Administration has other problems at the moment. "Mr Bush's presidency is in deep trouble," declared Alec Russell in this space yesterday. "It is worth recalling that even at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal Mr Clinton's approval rating never dropped below 55 per cent, while Mr Bush's is now at 40."
Is it really worth recalling? Mr Clinton's approval rating stayed above 55 because he was careful not to do anything, at least on the non-pants-dropping aspects of his presidency, of which the electorate might disapprove. The oral sex was pretty much the only position he took that wasn't focus-grouped by Dick Morris beforehand - and, come to think of it, it wouldn't surprise me if it was and that's why he went ahead with it. ("Our polling suggests it would make you seem attractively flawed and human to susceptible soccer moms in swing states, Mr President.")
At any rate, above the waist, Mr Clinton governed as an "Eisenhower Republican" - ie, very non-confrontational. The president's distinguishing characteristics loomed paradoxically large over the era only because everything else he did was so small.
Mr Bush, on the other hand, wants to remake the Middle East, reform social security, legalise illegal immigrants, drill for oil in the Arctic wilderness, etc. Whatever the merits of these positions, they are confrontational. Even many of his supporters balk at two or more of the items on that list.
You could fill Yankee Stadium with the massed ranks of assistant secretaries of state and deputy national security advisers from his father's administration - and Reagan's and Ford's and Nixon's - who oppose the Bush Doctrine to blow apart the fetid stability of the Arab world. A radical repudiation of half a century of bipartisan policy on a critical component of the geopolitical scene ought to be controversial.
Posterity will decide whether Bush got that one right. By contrast, posterity will have a hard time recalling Mr Clinton at all, except as a novelty-act intermission between the Cold War and the new war. Would you rather be popular or would you rather be consequential? Popularity is a fine measure for celebrity, and even then it fades quicker than a DNA stain on an old cocktail dress.
Granted, President Bush has failed to use the bully pulpit. As I wrote in the Telegraph in September 2002: "A few weeks after the attacks, he had the highest approval ratings of any president in history. But he didn't do anything with them." And, although I was a bit off in my timing, Mr Bush was indeed eventually "right back where he was on September 10, 2001: the 50 per cent president, his approval ratings in the fifties, his 'negatives' high, the half of the country that didn't vote for him feeling no warmer toward him than if the day that 'changed the world' had never happened".
But, given that reality, it's worth pondering who it is who's dissatisfied with Bush. In November 2004, he won 51 per cent of the vote and John Kerry took 48 per cent. The five or 10 per cent who've temporarily wandered away (a poll yesterday had Bush at 45 per cent) are not "centrists" or "moderates" or "swing voters" or some other mythical category of squishes who want an end to what Alec Russell calls the Karl Rove "style of hardball politics".
The lesson of every contest from the 2000 election to the abandonment last week of Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination is that, as Michael Barone wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr Bush can count on being firmly, and more or less unanimously, opposed by the Democrats, and he can succeed only when he has the strong support of the Republican base".
Just so. Bush is a polarising figure because these are polarising times. But, when the dust settles (metaphorically, I hope), his designation of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" will seem a shrewder judgment than that of the Euro-appeasers or the snob Islamophiles. Facing profound challenges, most political leaders in the western world have shirked confrontation on everything from Islamism to unaffordable social programmes - and their peoples will live with the consequences of that non-confrontation long after those leaders are gone.
Confrontation is a good thing
By Mark Steyn
According to The Sunday Telegraph, on this week's whirlwind tour of the Great Satan, the Prince of Wales "will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam…because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11". His Royal Highness apparently finds the Bush approach to Islam "too confrontational".
If the Prince wants to take a few examples of the non-confrontational approach with him to the White House, here's a couple pulled at random from the last week's news: the president of Iran called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Kofi Annan expressed his "dismay".
Excellent. Struck the perfect non-confrontational tone. Were the Iranian nuclear programme a little more advanced and they'd actually wiped Israel off the map, the secretary-general might have felt obliged to be more confrontational and express his "deep concern".
In Sulawesi, Indonesia, three Christian girls walking home from school were beheaded.
"It is unclear what was behind the attack," reported the BBC, scrupulously non-confrontationally.
In the Australian state of Victoria, reports the Herald Sun, "police are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits". Tough luck for us infidel wife-beaters, but admirably non-confrontational Islam-wise.
Having followed the last Prince of Wales in his taste for older divorcées, His Royal Highness seems to be emulating Edward VIII on the geopolitical front, too, and carelessly aligning himself with the wrong side on the central challenge of the age. It's true that Mr Bush does not have the Prince's bulging Rolodex of bin Laden siblings and doesn't seem to get the same kick out of climbing into the old Lawrence-of-Arabia get-up for dinner with them: for His Highness, the excitement is in tents. But Bush has liberated 50 million Muslims from tyrannous regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and, if he was in the mood to be really confrontational, he'd tell Charles to stick it up his djellaba.
Sadly, even a neocon warmonger can't get confrontational over every nickel 'n' dime emissary passing through the office, and the Administration has other problems at the moment. "Mr Bush's presidency is in deep trouble," declared Alec Russell in this space yesterday. "It is worth recalling that even at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal Mr Clinton's approval rating never dropped below 55 per cent, while Mr Bush's is now at 40."
Is it really worth recalling? Mr Clinton's approval rating stayed above 55 because he was careful not to do anything, at least on the non-pants-dropping aspects of his presidency, of which the electorate might disapprove. The oral sex was pretty much the only position he took that wasn't focus-grouped by Dick Morris beforehand - and, come to think of it, it wouldn't surprise me if it was and that's why he went ahead with it. ("Our polling suggests it would make you seem attractively flawed and human to susceptible soccer moms in swing states, Mr President.")
At any rate, above the waist, Mr Clinton governed as an "Eisenhower Republican" - ie, very non-confrontational. The president's distinguishing characteristics loomed paradoxically large over the era only because everything else he did was so small.
Mr Bush, on the other hand, wants to remake the Middle East, reform social security, legalise illegal immigrants, drill for oil in the Arctic wilderness, etc. Whatever the merits of these positions, they are confrontational. Even many of his supporters balk at two or more of the items on that list.
You could fill Yankee Stadium with the massed ranks of assistant secretaries of state and deputy national security advisers from his father's administration - and Reagan's and Ford's and Nixon's - who oppose the Bush Doctrine to blow apart the fetid stability of the Arab world. A radical repudiation of half a century of bipartisan policy on a critical component of the geopolitical scene ought to be controversial.
Posterity will decide whether Bush got that one right. By contrast, posterity will have a hard time recalling Mr Clinton at all, except as a novelty-act intermission between the Cold War and the new war. Would you rather be popular or would you rather be consequential? Popularity is a fine measure for celebrity, and even then it fades quicker than a DNA stain on an old cocktail dress.
Granted, President Bush has failed to use the bully pulpit. As I wrote in the Telegraph in September 2002: "A few weeks after the attacks, he had the highest approval ratings of any president in history. But he didn't do anything with them." And, although I was a bit off in my timing, Mr Bush was indeed eventually "right back where he was on September 10, 2001: the 50 per cent president, his approval ratings in the fifties, his 'negatives' high, the half of the country that didn't vote for him feeling no warmer toward him than if the day that 'changed the world' had never happened".
But, given that reality, it's worth pondering who it is who's dissatisfied with Bush. In November 2004, he won 51 per cent of the vote and John Kerry took 48 per cent. The five or 10 per cent who've temporarily wandered away (a poll yesterday had Bush at 45 per cent) are not "centrists" or "moderates" or "swing voters" or some other mythical category of squishes who want an end to what Alec Russell calls the Karl Rove "style of hardball politics".
The lesson of every contest from the 2000 election to the abandonment last week of Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination is that, as Michael Barone wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr Bush can count on being firmly, and more or less unanimously, opposed by the Democrats, and he can succeed only when he has the strong support of the Republican base".
Just so. Bush is a polarising figure because these are polarising times. But, when the dust settles (metaphorically, I hope), his designation of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" will seem a shrewder judgment than that of the Euro-appeasers or the snob Islamophiles. Facing profound challenges, most political leaders in the western world have shirked confrontation on everything from Islamism to unaffordable social programmes - and their peoples will live with the consequences of that non-confrontation long after those leaders are gone.
Monday, October 31, 2005
From The Corner:
WITH ONLY SLIGHT EXAGGERATION: IT'S GO-TIME
By Jonah Goldberg
This is it. Back in June I wrote, "In Washington, conservatives and liberals are quietly loading up on drinking water, D batteries and extra ammo, in preparation for the coming battle over judges. Ralph Neas himself has been seen by the campfire carving notches into the stock of his rifle, muttering, 'Pain don't hurt.' No one knows when the fight's coming, but everyone knows it is."
Ever since, my prognostications seemed wrong. Roberts virtually sailed through. Miers didn't cause a split between right and left but between right and right. But now, this is the guy. Cokie Roberts said a senior Demcratic Senator has already denounced Alito as a "rightwing whacko" or words to that effect. Nina Totenberg called him "filibuster bait." Even now, federalist society and Naral types are running around town ducking their heads into barber shops and shoe shine parlors, shouting "it's on! It's on!" Those inside throw down their newspapers, haircuts unfinished, and race to the law libraries.
It reminds me of one of those scenes from "Any Which Way You Can" or "Caddyshack" where the buzz spreads that the big fight or the big match is on.
The seventh seal has been broken, the goat entrails point toward gotterdamerung, it's on
WITH ONLY SLIGHT EXAGGERATION: IT'S GO-TIME
By Jonah Goldberg
This is it. Back in June I wrote, "In Washington, conservatives and liberals are quietly loading up on drinking water, D batteries and extra ammo, in preparation for the coming battle over judges. Ralph Neas himself has been seen by the campfire carving notches into the stock of his rifle, muttering, 'Pain don't hurt.' No one knows when the fight's coming, but everyone knows it is."
Ever since, my prognostications seemed wrong. Roberts virtually sailed through. Miers didn't cause a split between right and left but between right and right. But now, this is the guy. Cokie Roberts said a senior Demcratic Senator has already denounced Alito as a "rightwing whacko" or words to that effect. Nina Totenberg called him "filibuster bait." Even now, federalist society and Naral types are running around town ducking their heads into barber shops and shoe shine parlors, shouting "it's on! It's on!" Those inside throw down their newspapers, haircuts unfinished, and race to the law libraries.
It reminds me of one of those scenes from "Any Which Way You Can" or "Caddyshack" where the buzz spreads that the big fight or the big match is on.
The seventh seal has been broken, the goat entrails point toward gotterdamerung, it's on
From Captain's Quarters:
Alito Gets The Nod
President Bush will nominate Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor, the third nominee for this seat. The AP and Fox News reports that the New Jersey jurist and former prosecutor had topped George Bush's list during his last round of deliberations, but had lost out to the now-withdrawn Harriet Miers when Bush decided to try choosing someone outside of the "judicial monastery":
Bush believes that Alito has not only the right experience and conservative ideology for the job, but he also has a temperament suited to building consensus on the court. A former prosecutor, Alito has experience off the bench that factored into Bush's thinking, the officials said.
While Alito is expected to win praise from Bush's allies on the right, Democrats have served notice that his nomination would spark a partisan brawl. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Sunday that Alito's nomination would "create a lot of problems."
Unlike Miers, who has never been a judge, Alito, a 55-year-old jurist from New Jersey, has been a strong conservative voice on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since former President George H.W. Bush seated him there in 1990.
Of course, the Democrats blew their one opportunity to get a moderate on the bench during the Bush administration by waiting until Miers withdrew before defending her. Prior to that, Charles Schumer and Pat Leahy took great pains to call her questionnaire response "insulting" and echoing conservative complaints that her resume seemed too lightweight for a nomination to the Supreme Court. Had they pledged to support her, Bush likely would have allowed her to coast through the hearings to a floor vote despite the dissatisfaction on the right.
Now Bush has nominated a jurist with a solid track record and a reputation for a scholarly and consistent approach to Constitutional issues. However, unlike some of the other people on the list, such as Janice Rogers Brown, Alito does not produce a knee-jerk reaction on the Left. The two organizations that have pushed the disastrous obstructionist strategy for the Democrats, People for the American Way and Alliance for Justice, don't even have a ready profile for opposition to Alito, despite his long residence on conservative short lists.
On the other hand, Alito doesn't always produce rulings that please the Right, which sometimes wishes for activism when it should be pleased with originalism. USA Today shows Alito's libertarian streak in a July profile highlighted by Michelle Malkin:
Some observers say that Alito cannot be easily pigeon-holed. In Saxe v. State College Area School District, Alito, writing for the panel, argued that the school does not have the right to punish students for vulgar language or harassment when it doesn't disrupt the school day. "Sam struck that down as a violation of free speech," Kmiec says. "That's not a conservative outcome."
Alito, at 55, has the possibility of providing 20-30 years of jurisprudence on the Supreme Court, meaning that he and John Roberts have a real opportunity to turn the court back from its decades-long flirtation with supplanting the Legislature and turning itself into a strange American version of the Iranian Guardian Council. In this nomination, Bush may have hit the home run we wanted with the first nomination. Democrats may well try obstructionism, but they stand to lose the filibuster if they try -- and if John Paul Stevens steps down or dies during the next two years, the path will open up for Janice Rogers Brown to take his place.
Alito Gets The Nod
President Bush will nominate Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor, the third nominee for this seat. The AP and Fox News reports that the New Jersey jurist and former prosecutor had topped George Bush's list during his last round of deliberations, but had lost out to the now-withdrawn Harriet Miers when Bush decided to try choosing someone outside of the "judicial monastery":
Bush believes that Alito has not only the right experience and conservative ideology for the job, but he also has a temperament suited to building consensus on the court. A former prosecutor, Alito has experience off the bench that factored into Bush's thinking, the officials said.
While Alito is expected to win praise from Bush's allies on the right, Democrats have served notice that his nomination would spark a partisan brawl. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Sunday that Alito's nomination would "create a lot of problems."
Unlike Miers, who has never been a judge, Alito, a 55-year-old jurist from New Jersey, has been a strong conservative voice on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since former President George H.W. Bush seated him there in 1990.
Of course, the Democrats blew their one opportunity to get a moderate on the bench during the Bush administration by waiting until Miers withdrew before defending her. Prior to that, Charles Schumer and Pat Leahy took great pains to call her questionnaire response "insulting" and echoing conservative complaints that her resume seemed too lightweight for a nomination to the Supreme Court. Had they pledged to support her, Bush likely would have allowed her to coast through the hearings to a floor vote despite the dissatisfaction on the right.
Now Bush has nominated a jurist with a solid track record and a reputation for a scholarly and consistent approach to Constitutional issues. However, unlike some of the other people on the list, such as Janice Rogers Brown, Alito does not produce a knee-jerk reaction on the Left. The two organizations that have pushed the disastrous obstructionist strategy for the Democrats, People for the American Way and Alliance for Justice, don't even have a ready profile for opposition to Alito, despite his long residence on conservative short lists.
On the other hand, Alito doesn't always produce rulings that please the Right, which sometimes wishes for activism when it should be pleased with originalism. USA Today shows Alito's libertarian streak in a July profile highlighted by Michelle Malkin:
Some observers say that Alito cannot be easily pigeon-holed. In Saxe v. State College Area School District, Alito, writing for the panel, argued that the school does not have the right to punish students for vulgar language or harassment when it doesn't disrupt the school day. "Sam struck that down as a violation of free speech," Kmiec says. "That's not a conservative outcome."
Alito, at 55, has the possibility of providing 20-30 years of jurisprudence on the Supreme Court, meaning that he and John Roberts have a real opportunity to turn the court back from its decades-long flirtation with supplanting the Legislature and turning itself into a strange American version of the Iranian Guardian Council. In this nomination, Bush may have hit the home run we wanted with the first nomination. Democrats may well try obstructionism, but they stand to lose the filibuster if they try -- and if John Paul Stevens steps down or dies during the next two years, the path will open up for Janice Rogers Brown to take his place.
From US News:
Samuel Alito Jr.
By Bret Schulte
Nicknamed "Scalito" for views resembling those of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito Jr. is a favorite son of the political right. Appointed in 1990 by George H.W. Bush to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito has earned a reputation for intellectual rigor and polite but frequent dissent in a court that has been historically liberal. His mettle, as well as a personable demeanor and ties to former Republican administrations, has long had observers buzzing about his potential rise to the high court. "Sam Alito is in my mind the strongest candidate on the list," says Pepperdine law Prof. Douglas Kmiec. "I know them all. . .but I think Sam is a standout because he's a judge's judge. He approaches cases with impartiality and open-mindedness."
A New Jersey native, the 55-year-old Alito received a bachelor's degree from Princeton and graduated from Yale Law School. He worked in the solicitor general's office during the Reagan administration and was a U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey when George H.W. Bush nominated him to the Third Circuit. His 15 years on the bench have been marked by strong conservatism on a case-by-case basis that avoids sweeping opinions on constitutionality.
In 1997, Alito authored the majority opinion upholding a city's right to stage a holiday display that included a Nativity scene and a menorah because the city also included secular symbols and a banner emphasizing the importance of diversity. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito was the sole dissenter on the Third Circuit, which struck a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands. He argued that many of the potential reasons for an abortion, such as "economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition . . . may be obviated by discussion prior to abortion." The case went on to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision 6 to 3.
Alito's conservative stripes are equally evident in criminal law. Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer who has known Alito since 1981 and tried cases before him on the Third Circuit, describes him as "an activist conservatist judge" who is tough on crime and narrowly construes prisoners' and criminals' rights. "He's very prosecutorial from the bench. He has looked to be creative in his conservatism, which is, I think, as much a Rehnquist as a Scalia trait," Lustberg says.
Some observers say that Alito cannot be easily pigeon-holed. In Saxe v. State College Area School District, Alito, writing for the panel, argued that the school does not have the right to punish students for vulgar language or harassment when it doesn't disrupt the school day. "Sam struck that down as a violation of free speech," Kmiec says. "That's not a conservative outcome."
Off the bench, friends and colleagues describe Alito as quiet and self-effacing with a wry sense of humor. He is a voracious reader with a particular love for biographies and history. With his wife, Martha, he has a son in college and a daughter in high school. "He's mild mannered and generous and family oriented," Lustberg says. "I don't agree with him on many issues, but I have the utmost respect for him. No one can question his intelligence or integrity."
Samuel Alito Jr.
By Bret Schulte
Nicknamed "Scalito" for views resembling those of conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito Jr. is a favorite son of the political right. Appointed in 1990 by George H.W. Bush to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito has earned a reputation for intellectual rigor and polite but frequent dissent in a court that has been historically liberal. His mettle, as well as a personable demeanor and ties to former Republican administrations, has long had observers buzzing about his potential rise to the high court. "Sam Alito is in my mind the strongest candidate on the list," says Pepperdine law Prof. Douglas Kmiec. "I know them all. . .but I think Sam is a standout because he's a judge's judge. He approaches cases with impartiality and open-mindedness."
A New Jersey native, the 55-year-old Alito received a bachelor's degree from Princeton and graduated from Yale Law School. He worked in the solicitor general's office during the Reagan administration and was a U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey when George H.W. Bush nominated him to the Third Circuit. His 15 years on the bench have been marked by strong conservatism on a case-by-case basis that avoids sweeping opinions on constitutionality.
In 1997, Alito authored the majority opinion upholding a city's right to stage a holiday display that included a Nativity scene and a menorah because the city also included secular symbols and a banner emphasizing the importance of diversity. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito was the sole dissenter on the Third Circuit, which struck a Pennsylvania law that required women seeking abortions to consult their husbands. He argued that many of the potential reasons for an abortion, such as "economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition . . . may be obviated by discussion prior to abortion." The case went on to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision 6 to 3.
Alito's conservative stripes are equally evident in criminal law. Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer who has known Alito since 1981 and tried cases before him on the Third Circuit, describes him as "an activist conservatist judge" who is tough on crime and narrowly construes prisoners' and criminals' rights. "He's very prosecutorial from the bench. He has looked to be creative in his conservatism, which is, I think, as much a Rehnquist as a Scalia trait," Lustberg says.
Some observers say that Alito cannot be easily pigeon-holed. In Saxe v. State College Area School District, Alito, writing for the panel, argued that the school does not have the right to punish students for vulgar language or harassment when it doesn't disrupt the school day. "Sam struck that down as a violation of free speech," Kmiec says. "That's not a conservative outcome."
Off the bench, friends and colleagues describe Alito as quiet and self-effacing with a wry sense of humor. He is a voracious reader with a particular love for biographies and history. With his wife, Martha, he has a son in college and a daughter in high school. "He's mild mannered and generous and family oriented," Lustberg says. "I don't agree with him on many issues, but I have the utmost respect for him. No one can question his intelligence or integrity."
From PoliPundit:
Alito:The Roll Call Vote
This is the first time, since Robert Bork in 1987, that we have a Supreme Court nominee who everyone thinks will likely overturn Roe v. Wade. Are there 50 votes in the Senate to confirm Alito?
To get to the count, we start with a “Sense of the Senate” resolution on whether Roe v. Wade should be upheld. As I’ve noted before, such a resolution is likely to garner 50 or 51 votes in favor of Roe. Now we just have to go through that roll call, and decide how many pro-Roe Republicans are likely to vote for an anti-Roe nominee, and how many anti-Roe Democrats are likely to vote against an anti-Roe nominee.
Let’s start with the pro-Roe Republicans:
Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) - Chafee is a Republican senator from the second-most Democrat state in the country. He can be forgiven for voting against Alito.
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) - Collins is very much pro-choice, and we’ve known this for some time. She can and will vote against this nominee.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) - She’s pro-choice. But she’s from Texas. In Texas, loyalty is an important quality. And Hutchison has national ambitions too. She will likely vote for Alito.
Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) - Isakson is ostensibly “pro-choice,” but he is highly unlikely to buck his president, his party, and his state, on this nomination. He will likely vote for the nomination.
Senator Lisa Murkoswki (R-AK) - Murkoswki is “pro-choice,” but she’s a first-term senator who’ll have to face voters back home in Alaska soon. Count her in the pro-Alito camp.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) - See Senator Susan Collins above.
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) - With the Judiciary Committee comprising 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats, Specter holds the balance as to whether the nomination will be favorably reported out of Committee. He voted against Robert Bork, but was instrumental in getting Clarence Thomas confirmed. Who knows where he’ll come down on his fellow Philadelphian. If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to make a prediction, I’d say he’ll vote in favor of Alito.
Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) - I’m not sure he’ll vote for this nomination; he voted “present” when it came time to confirm Priscilla Owen to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Senator John Warner (R-VA) - He voted against Robert Bork, and was instrumental in bringing about the despicable Gang-of-14 compromise. He may very well vote against Alito.
So there are 3-6 pro-Roe Republican senators who will vote for Alito!
That means we start off with 52-55 votes in favor of the nominee.
Now let’s look at the anti-Roe Democrats.
Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) - Nelson was the only Democrat to vote to confirm Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Voters in his home state of Nebraska wouldn’t take kindly to him if he were the decisive vote to reject this nominee. And he’s facing a stiff challenge in 2006 from Don Stenberg, of the Stenberg v. Carhart SCOTUS decision that kept partial-birth abortion legal. Count Nelson in the Yes camp.
Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) - Pryor talks a good conservative game. But, like most Democrats, he’s an ultra-liberal at heart. A No vote.
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) - Reid is a puppet of the ultra-liberal special interest groups, and voted against John Roberts. Why would he vote for this nominee?
So count on one or two anti-Roe votes switching to anti-Alito.
That makes the roll call tally 50-54 votes in favor of this nomination. With the vice president’s tie-breaking vote, confirmation is almost certainly assured.
Alito:The Roll Call Vote
This is the first time, since Robert Bork in 1987, that we have a Supreme Court nominee who everyone thinks will likely overturn Roe v. Wade. Are there 50 votes in the Senate to confirm Alito?
To get to the count, we start with a “Sense of the Senate” resolution on whether Roe v. Wade should be upheld. As I’ve noted before, such a resolution is likely to garner 50 or 51 votes in favor of Roe. Now we just have to go through that roll call, and decide how many pro-Roe Republicans are likely to vote for an anti-Roe nominee, and how many anti-Roe Democrats are likely to vote against an anti-Roe nominee.
Let’s start with the pro-Roe Republicans:
Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) - Chafee is a Republican senator from the second-most Democrat state in the country. He can be forgiven for voting against Alito.
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) - Collins is very much pro-choice, and we’ve known this for some time. She can and will vote against this nominee.
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) - She’s pro-choice. But she’s from Texas. In Texas, loyalty is an important quality. And Hutchison has national ambitions too. She will likely vote for Alito.
Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) - Isakson is ostensibly “pro-choice,” but he is highly unlikely to buck his president, his party, and his state, on this nomination. He will likely vote for the nomination.
Senator Lisa Murkoswki (R-AK) - Murkoswki is “pro-choice,” but she’s a first-term senator who’ll have to face voters back home in Alaska soon. Count her in the pro-Alito camp.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) - See Senator Susan Collins above.
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) - With the Judiciary Committee comprising 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats, Specter holds the balance as to whether the nomination will be favorably reported out of Committee. He voted against Robert Bork, but was instrumental in getting Clarence Thomas confirmed. Who knows where he’ll come down on his fellow Philadelphian. If you were to put a gun to my head and force me to make a prediction, I’d say he’ll vote in favor of Alito.
Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) - I’m not sure he’ll vote for this nomination; he voted “present” when it came time to confirm Priscilla Owen to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Senator John Warner (R-VA) - He voted against Robert Bork, and was instrumental in bringing about the despicable Gang-of-14 compromise. He may very well vote against Alito.
So there are 3-6 pro-Roe Republican senators who will vote for Alito!
That means we start off with 52-55 votes in favor of the nominee.
Now let’s look at the anti-Roe Democrats.
Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) - Nelson was the only Democrat to vote to confirm Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Voters in his home state of Nebraska wouldn’t take kindly to him if he were the decisive vote to reject this nominee. And he’s facing a stiff challenge in 2006 from Don Stenberg, of the Stenberg v. Carhart SCOTUS decision that kept partial-birth abortion legal. Count Nelson in the Yes camp.
Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) - Pryor talks a good conservative game. But, like most Democrats, he’s an ultra-liberal at heart. A No vote.
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) - Reid is a puppet of the ultra-liberal special interest groups, and voted against John Roberts. Why would he vote for this nominee?
So count on one or two anti-Roe votes switching to anti-Alito.
That makes the roll call tally 50-54 votes in favor of this nomination. With the vice president’s tie-breaking vote, confirmation is almost certainly assured.
From washingtonpost.com:
Bush Selects Alito for Supreme Court
By Fred Barbash and Peter Baker
Monday, October 31, 2005
President Bush today will name appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a source close to the White House. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.
Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House high court short list. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.
Some Democrats, including minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), have threatened to oppose Alito, however.
Alito would be Bush's second choice in a month for the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has announced her retirement but has remained on the court pending confirmation of a successor.
Alito's resume, including a degree from the Yale Law School and service in the Reagan administration Justice Department, is very much unlike Miers', who had no appellate experience, and very much like that of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Alito served during the Reagan administration in the office of Solicitor General, which argues on behalf of the government in the Supreme Court.
Unlike Roberts, he has opined from the bench on both abortion rights, church-state separation and gender discrimination to the pleasure of conservatives and displeasure of liberals.
While he has been dubbed "Scalito" by some lawyers for a supposed affinity to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and his Italian-American heritage, most observers believe that greatly oversimplifies his record.
Alito is considered far less provocative a figure than Scalia both in personality and judicial temperament. His opinions and dissents tend to be dryly analytical rather than slashing.
In addition, his appeals court record is not uniformly conservative on the sorts of issues that arise in Supreme Court confirmation battles.
In 2004, he ruled in favor of a complaint brought under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by a boy badly bullied by his classmates who was seeking legal relief but had been rebuffed by a U.S. District Court.</p>
He also authored a majority opinion granting federal court review to an African American who could not get state courts to hear his claim of racial bias on the part of a juror in his trial. The case involved a juror who used racial epithets outside the confines of the jury room.</p>
His record on the appeals court makes Alito less liable to suggestions made about Roberts, with only two years as a judge, that he is somehow a judicial mystery.
Rather, liberals are likely to focus on his opinions and dissents, most notably in the 1991 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
In that case, Alito joined joined a Third Circuit panel in upholding most of a Pennsylvania law imposing numerous restrictions on women seeking abortions. The law, among other things, required physicians to advise women of the potential medical dangers of abortion and tell them of the alternatives available. It also imposed a 24 hour waiting period for abortions and barred minors from obtaining abortions without parental consent.
The panel, in that same ruling, struck down a single provision in the law requiring women to notify their husband's before they obtained an abortion. Alito dissented from that part of the decision.
Citing previous opinions of O'Connor, Alito wrote that an abortion regulation is unconstitutional only if it imposes an undue burden on a woman's access to the procedure. The spousal notification provision, he wrote, does not constitute such a burden and must therefore only meet the requirement that it be rationally related to some legitimate government purpose.
"Even assuming that the rational relationship test is more demanding in the present context than in most equal protection cases, that test is satisfied here," he wrote.
"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems--such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition-- that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion.
"In addition," he wrote, "the legislature could have reasonably concluded that Section 3209 [the spousal provision] would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband's interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure. . . . The Pennsylvania legislature presumably decided that the law on balance would be beneficial. We have no authority to overrule that legislative judgment even if we deem it "unwise" or worse. "
The case ultimately reached he Supreme Court, which upheld the appeals court decision, disagreed with Alito and also used the case to reaffirm its support for Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion.
On the spousal notification provision, O'Connor wrote for the court that it did indeed constitute an obstacle. The "spousal notification requirement is . . . likely to prevent a significant number of women from obtaining an abortion," she wrote.
"It does not merely make abortions a little more difficult or expensive to obtain; for many women, it will impose a substantial obstacle. We must not blind ourselves to the fact that the significant number of women who fear for their safety and the safety of their children are likely to be deterred from procuring an abortion as surely as if the Commonwealth had outlawed abortion in all cases," she said.
Plus, it "embodies a view of marriage consonant with the common law status of married women, but repugnant to our present understanding of marriage and of the nature of the rights secured by the Constitution. Women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when they marry, " she said.
"The Constitution protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the abuse of governmental power, even where that power is employed for the supposed benefit of a member of the individual's family."
While lauded by conservatives, Alito has also been criticized by women's rights organizations for his 1996 dissent in a sex discrimination case, Sheridan v. Dupont, in which he argued that Third Circuit that had made it too easy for discrimination complaints to reach a jury trial. The standards for deciding when a discrimination case reaches trial are hotly controversial as they determine whether or not such a case moves forward at all.
The dissent concluded a significant dispute in the circuit over the analytical framework for granting summary judgments dismissing a complaint without a trial under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Alito initially challenged the existing framework and prevailed when the case was before a three judge panel. He lost the battle when the full circuit ruled.
The widely discussed exchange in the Sheridan case illustrated both Alito's willingness to take on a potentially losing battle in the law and his approach to such battles, which, in that case, was calm, analytical and devoid of flamboyant rhetoric.
In the area of church and state, Alito has been consistently supportive of the conservative view that the courts should be more accommodating when considering state entanglement with religion. He wrote a majority opinion in ACLU v. Schundler , holding that a city's holiday display that included a creche and menorah did not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment because it included secular symbols as well, such as Frosty the Snowman.
Bush Selects Alito for Supreme Court
By Fred Barbash and Peter Baker
Monday, October 31, 2005
President Bush today will name appeals court Judge Samuel A. Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a source close to the White House. Alito, 55, serves on the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, where his record on abortion rights and church-state issues has been widely applauded by conservatives and criticized by liberals.
Alito, appointed to the appeals court in 1990 by George H.W. Bush, has been a regular for years on the White House high court short list. He was also among those proposed by conservative intellectuals as an alternative to Harriet Miers, the White House counsel who withdrew as the nominee last week.
Some Democrats, including minority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev), have threatened to oppose Alito, however.
Alito would be Bush's second choice in a month for the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has announced her retirement but has remained on the court pending confirmation of a successor.
Alito's resume, including a degree from the Yale Law School and service in the Reagan administration Justice Department, is very much unlike Miers', who had no appellate experience, and very much like that of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Like Chief Justice John Roberts, Alito served during the Reagan administration in the office of Solicitor General, which argues on behalf of the government in the Supreme Court.
Unlike Roberts, he has opined from the bench on both abortion rights, church-state separation and gender discrimination to the pleasure of conservatives and displeasure of liberals.
While he has been dubbed "Scalito" by some lawyers for a supposed affinity to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and his Italian-American heritage, most observers believe that greatly oversimplifies his record.
Alito is considered far less provocative a figure than Scalia both in personality and judicial temperament. His opinions and dissents tend to be dryly analytical rather than slashing.
In addition, his appeals court record is not uniformly conservative on the sorts of issues that arise in Supreme Court confirmation battles.
In 2004, he ruled in favor of a complaint brought under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by a boy badly bullied by his classmates who was seeking legal relief but had been rebuffed by a U.S. District Court.</p>
He also authored a majority opinion granting federal court review to an African American who could not get state courts to hear his claim of racial bias on the part of a juror in his trial. The case involved a juror who used racial epithets outside the confines of the jury room.</p>
His record on the appeals court makes Alito less liable to suggestions made about Roberts, with only two years as a judge, that he is somehow a judicial mystery.
Rather, liberals are likely to focus on his opinions and dissents, most notably in the 1991 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
In that case, Alito joined joined a Third Circuit panel in upholding most of a Pennsylvania law imposing numerous restrictions on women seeking abortions. The law, among other things, required physicians to advise women of the potential medical dangers of abortion and tell them of the alternatives available. It also imposed a 24 hour waiting period for abortions and barred minors from obtaining abortions without parental consent.
The panel, in that same ruling, struck down a single provision in the law requiring women to notify their husband's before they obtained an abortion. Alito dissented from that part of the decision.
Citing previous opinions of O'Connor, Alito wrote that an abortion regulation is unconstitutional only if it imposes an undue burden on a woman's access to the procedure. The spousal notification provision, he wrote, does not constitute such a burden and must therefore only meet the requirement that it be rationally related to some legitimate government purpose.
"Even assuming that the rational relationship test is more demanding in the present context than in most equal protection cases, that test is satisfied here," he wrote.
"The Pennsylvania legislature could have rationally believed that some married women are initially inclined to obtain an abortion without their husbands' knowledge because of perceived problems--such as economic constraints, future plans, or the husbands' previously expressed opposition-- that may be obviated by discussion prior to the abortion.
"In addition," he wrote, "the legislature could have reasonably concluded that Section 3209 [the spousal provision] would lead to such discussion and thereby properly further a husband's interests in the fetus in a sufficient percentage of the affected cases to justify enactment of this measure. . . . The Pennsylvania legislature presumably decided that the law on balance would be beneficial. We have no authority to overrule that legislative judgment even if we deem it "unwise" or worse. "
The case ultimately reached he Supreme Court, which upheld the appeals court decision, disagreed with Alito and also used the case to reaffirm its support for Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion.
On the spousal notification provision, O'Connor wrote for the court that it did indeed constitute an obstacle. The "spousal notification requirement is . . . likely to prevent a significant number of women from obtaining an abortion," she wrote.
"It does not merely make abortions a little more difficult or expensive to obtain; for many women, it will impose a substantial obstacle. We must not blind ourselves to the fact that the significant number of women who fear for their safety and the safety of their children are likely to be deterred from procuring an abortion as surely as if the Commonwealth had outlawed abortion in all cases," she said.
Plus, it "embodies a view of marriage consonant with the common law status of married women, but repugnant to our present understanding of marriage and of the nature of the rights secured by the Constitution. Women do not lose their constitutionally protected liberty when they marry, " she said.
"The Constitution protects all individuals, male or female, married or unmarried, from the abuse of governmental power, even where that power is employed for the supposed benefit of a member of the individual's family."
While lauded by conservatives, Alito has also been criticized by women's rights organizations for his 1996 dissent in a sex discrimination case, Sheridan v. Dupont, in which he argued that Third Circuit that had made it too easy for discrimination complaints to reach a jury trial. The standards for deciding when a discrimination case reaches trial are hotly controversial as they determine whether or not such a case moves forward at all.
The dissent concluded a significant dispute in the circuit over the analytical framework for granting summary judgments dismissing a complaint without a trial under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Alito initially challenged the existing framework and prevailed when the case was before a three judge panel. He lost the battle when the full circuit ruled.
The widely discussed exchange in the Sheridan case illustrated both Alito's willingness to take on a potentially losing battle in the law and his approach to such battles, which, in that case, was calm, analytical and devoid of flamboyant rhetoric.
In the area of church and state, Alito has been consistently supportive of the conservative view that the courts should be more accommodating when considering state entanglement with religion. He wrote a majority opinion in ACLU v. Schundler , holding that a city's holiday display that included a creche and menorah did not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment because it included secular symbols as well, such as Frosty the Snowman.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, DEMOCRATS! From Bench Memos:
Congratulations, President Bush!
By Ed Whelan
10/31 07:18 AM
In selecting Third Circuit judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court, President Bush has made a truly outstanding nomination that deserves widespread acclaim. By any objective criteria, it is doubtful that there is anyone now or in recent decades (yes, not even Chief Justice Roberts) whose experience and qualifications better prepare him for the Supreme Court.
Judge Alito’s entire career since graduating from Yale Law School in the mid-1970s has been devoted to public service in the law. His range of experience dealing with difficult questions of federal law is unmatched. After a prestigious clerkship on the Third Circuit, he worked as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey for four years. Then, as assistant to the Solicitor General, he briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court for four years. He next served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel—the office that was previously headed by Rehnquist and Scalia and that advises the White House Counsel’s office and the entire executive branch on the proper meaning of the Constitution and other federal law. In 1987, Alito became United States Attorney in New Jersey. In that capacity, he was responsible for all federal prosecutions in New Jersey for three years (including the successful prosecution of a Libyan-sponsored terrorist who planned to attack various New York targets). And for the past 15 years, Alito has served with great distinction on the Third Circuit.
Just as the Left attacked Roberts, it will attack Alito. But President Bush has again selected an outstanding nominee whose intellect, character, experience, and, not least, proper understanding of the role of the courts will earn the deep respect of the American people and of all fair-minded observers.
Congratulations, President Bush!
By Ed Whelan
10/31 07:18 AM
In selecting Third Circuit judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court, President Bush has made a truly outstanding nomination that deserves widespread acclaim. By any objective criteria, it is doubtful that there is anyone now or in recent decades (yes, not even Chief Justice Roberts) whose experience and qualifications better prepare him for the Supreme Court.
Judge Alito’s entire career since graduating from Yale Law School in the mid-1970s has been devoted to public service in the law. His range of experience dealing with difficult questions of federal law is unmatched. After a prestigious clerkship on the Third Circuit, he worked as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey for four years. Then, as assistant to the Solicitor General, he briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court for four years. He next served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel—the office that was previously headed by Rehnquist and Scalia and that advises the White House Counsel’s office and the entire executive branch on the proper meaning of the Constitution and other federal law. In 1987, Alito became United States Attorney in New Jersey. In that capacity, he was responsible for all federal prosecutions in New Jersey for three years (including the successful prosecution of a Libyan-sponsored terrorist who planned to attack various New York targets). And for the past 15 years, Alito has served with great distinction on the Third Circuit.
Just as the Left attacked Roberts, it will attack Alito. But President Bush has again selected an outstanding nominee whose intellect, character, experience, and, not least, proper understanding of the role of the courts will earn the deep respect of the American people and of all fair-minded observers.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Merle Haggard Takes Another Musical Stand
Outspoken Musical Icon Urges, "Rebuild America First"
By: Chet Flippo
(NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)
The other day, a friend sent me a long e-mail string from a chatroom about back-and-forth arguments over whether or not Merle Haggard is the all-time greatest country artist. Almost in baseball terms, people were contemplating who is the MVP in country music history as songwriter, musician, performer, recording artist, bandleader, icon, etc. Several people posited Johnny Cash as a likelier candidate. Then the Willie Nelson advocates chimed in.
Discussions such as that are all well and good, but I feel like citing Waylon Jennings' reasoning as to why he, by and large, greatly disliked and tried to avoid music awards shows: He felt there shouldn't be competition between musical artists. He said it was hard enough being one and trying to live up to his own high standards, without being measured and judged -- largely by non-artists. I agree with that.
That said, there is little doubt that Haggard's achievements will stand as being among the highest in all of popular music history, not just in country music. His new album, Chicago Wind, is a fresh reminder of just why he is so important. And it speaks volumes about him that he was asked this year to open shows for both Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.
At age 68, he's just about seen it all and done it all and heard it all, but he still has many things on his mind. Over the years, he's commented on the state of affairs in this country, but he's never been politically predictable. Haggard has always been deeply patriotic, but obviously that does not always mean hewing to a particular political stance or political party. He speaks his mind.
His "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me" were very much socially polarizing songs. More than once, I was in Texas bars or nightclubs back in the day when I had long hair and much of the clientele in those joints did not. When those songs came on the jukebox, you could count on the tension level being ratcheted up, and you knew to expect some remarks and a veiled threat or two. And you always measured the distance to the door and your car.
So Haggard is not afraid to speak his mind. And he does so again, very frankly, in the song, "Rebuild America First."
"That's the News," his 2003 song commenting on Iraq, pretty much chastised the government and the media for swallowing the administration's spin that the war was over and won. Now he moves on to the matter of the U.S. being in Iraq, period. "Rebuild America First" is pretty honest and blunt. In part, he sings:
"Yea, men in position but backing away/Freedom is stuck in reverse/Let's get out of Iraq and get back on the track/And let's rebuild America first."
Haggard also comments on the current political and social scene in the song, "Where's All the Freedom?" He describes a country almost paralyzed by uncertainty, a nation where the Ten Commandments can't be displayed, where the grandparent of a soldier in Iraq can't afford to buy gasoline to drive to the grocery store, where individual rights are uncertain anymore.
He concludes: "Are we a nation under God anymore/How long do we cower down/Is this really still our ground/Our country is like a prisoner of war/Where's all the freedom that we're fightin' for."
As a revered country music pioneer -- and as an American citizen -- Haggard has earned the right to speak out. I think it's laudable that he does so when many other country artists feel -- rightly so, unfortunately, in many cases -- that to do so would jeopardize their careers with retail and radio. They're probably right. It would risk harm to their careers. Haggard isn't worried about that anymore. Good for him, agree with him or not. Country music was built on frankness and honesty. It still needs frankness and honesty.
Outspoken Musical Icon Urges, "Rebuild America First"
By: Chet Flippo
(NASHVILLE SKYLINE is a column by CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director Chet Flippo.)
The other day, a friend sent me a long e-mail string from a chatroom about back-and-forth arguments over whether or not Merle Haggard is the all-time greatest country artist. Almost in baseball terms, people were contemplating who is the MVP in country music history as songwriter, musician, performer, recording artist, bandleader, icon, etc. Several people posited Johnny Cash as a likelier candidate. Then the Willie Nelson advocates chimed in.
Discussions such as that are all well and good, but I feel like citing Waylon Jennings' reasoning as to why he, by and large, greatly disliked and tried to avoid music awards shows: He felt there shouldn't be competition between musical artists. He said it was hard enough being one and trying to live up to his own high standards, without being measured and judged -- largely by non-artists. I agree with that.
That said, there is little doubt that Haggard's achievements will stand as being among the highest in all of popular music history, not just in country music. His new album, Chicago Wind, is a fresh reminder of just why he is so important. And it speaks volumes about him that he was asked this year to open shows for both Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones.
At age 68, he's just about seen it all and done it all and heard it all, but he still has many things on his mind. Over the years, he's commented on the state of affairs in this country, but he's never been politically predictable. Haggard has always been deeply patriotic, but obviously that does not always mean hewing to a particular political stance or political party. He speaks his mind.
His "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me" were very much socially polarizing songs. More than once, I was in Texas bars or nightclubs back in the day when I had long hair and much of the clientele in those joints did not. When those songs came on the jukebox, you could count on the tension level being ratcheted up, and you knew to expect some remarks and a veiled threat or two. And you always measured the distance to the door and your car.
So Haggard is not afraid to speak his mind. And he does so again, very frankly, in the song, "Rebuild America First."
"That's the News," his 2003 song commenting on Iraq, pretty much chastised the government and the media for swallowing the administration's spin that the war was over and won. Now he moves on to the matter of the U.S. being in Iraq, period. "Rebuild America First" is pretty honest and blunt. In part, he sings:
"Yea, men in position but backing away/Freedom is stuck in reverse/Let's get out of Iraq and get back on the track/And let's rebuild America first."
Haggard also comments on the current political and social scene in the song, "Where's All the Freedom?" He describes a country almost paralyzed by uncertainty, a nation where the Ten Commandments can't be displayed, where the grandparent of a soldier in Iraq can't afford to buy gasoline to drive to the grocery store, where individual rights are uncertain anymore.
He concludes: "Are we a nation under God anymore/How long do we cower down/Is this really still our ground/Our country is like a prisoner of war/Where's all the freedom that we're fightin' for."
As a revered country music pioneer -- and as an American citizen -- Haggard has earned the right to speak out. I think it's laudable that he does so when many other country artists feel -- rightly so, unfortunately, in many cases -- that to do so would jeopardize their careers with retail and radio. They're probably right. It would risk harm to their careers. Haggard isn't worried about that anymore. Good for him, agree with him or not. Country music was built on frankness and honesty. It still needs frankness and honesty.
From The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Q&A: James Webb; former Secretary of the Navy
October 30, 2005
Webb, a 1968 Naval Academy graduate, was a highly decorated Marine infantry officer in Vietnam. He was an assistant secretary of defense and later secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. Webb is the author of six novels, the non-fiction "Born Fighting" and several Hollywood screenplays. He lectured at the James Bond Stockdale Leadership and Ethics Symposium at the University of San Diego Oct. 19 and was interviewed by members of the Union-Tribune's editorial board.
Question: You were a Marine infantry platoon leader and later a company commander. You were wounded twice and won a Navy Cross. You wrote "Fields of Fire," widely acclaimed as one of the best novels on Vietnam. And you became, in a sense, a spokesman for a lot of Vietnam veterans. Looking back 25 years, how has the country's view of America's Vietnam veterans changed since the 1970s?
Answer: First of all, I think with the young people there's absolutely no comprehension of what the war was about. It is very difficult to teach unless you get specialized courses in universities in this sort of thing. So basically in my experience the Vietnam War is pretty much summed up by people in a sentence or two that we went into Vietnam and it was a disaster and we left. And even on the Vietnamese side, I go to Vietnam a lot. As you know I speak Vietnamese. I can get away from the (Vietnamese government) handlers and talk to people. The official position in Vietnam is that Vietnam fought America, which is not true. The United States attempted to assist an existing government, which lost 245,000 soldiers dead on the battlefield. But I say that because that plays in to how people view Vietnam veterans. I think that the country, even back in '79 when I was working on the House Veterans Committee, the average American respected the service of the people who were in Vietnam. Today, it's like: 'yes this guy did a good job in a horrible endeavor.' There's not a comprehension of the level of performance of people who were in Vietnam. It has sort of faded. If you look at the actual battlefield results, there's no comprehension of how competent our military really was.
Do you think America's perception (of the war) has changed over the past 25 years given the boat people, human rights problems and Hanoi's dictatorship? What's history going to say about America's role in Vietnam?
One of the reasons that I stayed so involved with this over the years was because really what has been going on has been a quiet battle for how history's going to view this. And it becomes essential for people who have had different experiences, the combat experience and also stayed with this issue beyond 1973 or 1975 to see how things played out to make that case, to remind people. I had no political views when I went to Vietnam. I trusted the country's leadership. That was it. I was a 22-year-old guy trying to learn how to lead troops.
Just graduated from the Naval Academy?
Right. But I studied the history of Vietnam. I've studied warfare. But I wasn't going to get into a long political debate about whether the war was just or not. I used to tell people when I figure that out I'll talk to you about it. Right now I've got to go lead troops. After 1978 when the boat people starting showing up, you could only then really begin to discuss what it was we were attempting to do. When you have the witnesses of the truth, 50 percent dying, popping up in the water. But over the past seven or eight years, I think people who have gone into Vietnam, particularly if you're in the media or if you have some notoriety, you're usually accompanied by someone who is either your interpreter or your escort. And they are 90 percent of the time Interior Ministry people. They guide people through this. So there hasn't been a full comprehension of how that society has worked. I started going back in 1991. And it was pretty clearly still a Stalinist state in 1991. What moved Vietnam forward was when the Soviet Union fell, and they lost anywhere from $1 billion to $3 billion a year in subsidies.
And today?
The last three or four years actually have been pretty good. I was back in July and I was pretty impressed with the government leaders that I met with. This is at the province and district level. In a province where I had fought, where 10 years ago the government leaders were really hard-core America haters, apparatchiks. They've been able to groom some very competent people. So, on the one hand I don't think there's a comprehension at all of the journey. And, on the other hand, compared to some of the other countries in the region, it's fairly hopeful.
What is your take on the wisdom of our strategy in Iraq and the competence of its execution?
I was an early voice saying we shouldn't go in, that it was not connected to the war against international terrorism, that it was not among the highest national security concerns that we should be considering. My warning before we went in was basically that it was a strategic mousetrap on three different levels. One is that it would involve the nation's focus and attention and resources beyond military resources to the detriment of other interests. Second was that if you're going to decapitate a government, you would be draining your force structure. And thirdly, in the sense that we have focused so strongly on the Sunnis while the Shiites have been in a win-win since day one, and as a result we're empowering Iran.
Has that view changed any now?
No.
You don't buy the argument that it didn't used to be about terrorism and al-Qaeda but that now it is?
I think the tragedy in my view of Iraq is that it has created a lot more terrorists than would have existed if we hadn't gone in. I don't think it's a plus that Iraq is filled with terrorists right now. This isn't a zero-sum game like there's only X number of terrorists in the world and as a result we're going to draw them to the flytrap and kill them off.
There are a lot of people who say we made a terrible mistake but we will compound it if we just back out now. Do you agree?
I'm not saying we should pick up everything and leave in six months. I'm saying we made a horrendous mistake going in, in my view a strategic error. This is not a moral comment. There are a lot of situations around the world where I wouldn't shed a tear if a leader were taken out. The question is where you draw your national priorities and how that plays out. I was in Beirut as a journalist in 1983. It was an incredible experience for me looking at the lay of the land. We had an issue when I was secretary of the Navy where we tilted toward Iraq (during the Iran-Iraq war). I think I was the only guy in the Reagan administration who opposed the tilt toward Iraq in writing.
What's your recommendation on how we get out?
I think there are two things that need to happen. The first is that the administration needs to say with absolute clarity that we have no long-term aspirations in Iraq. And then the other is to reinvolve a lot of the countries that are in that region. Iran's probably too dangerous because of the way they've moved into the Shiite areas; But to reinvolve the Arab nations and invite them to participate in the solution.
In 1979 you famously wrote a piece questioning the Army's embrace of females in combat situations. Later you criticized what you saw as hysteria in the aftermath of the Navy's Tailhook scandal. Do you have any second thoughts on those issues?
My view then, and the decibel level was loud on all sides back in 1979 with the Carter administration. The Carter administration had just ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to support a political policy that did not exist. They had ordered them to support removing the ban on women in combat. That's when I wrote that piece. And the commandant of the Marine Corps at that time, Robert Barrow, who is one of my all-time Marine heroes, stood up to them. He called me after he had done it. He basically said that the deputy secretary of defense had given them that order and they had all smartly saluted except for Barrow. He said I do not believe that is a legal order, I'm going to have my counsel check on it. If it is a legal order, I'm going to explain to the Congress the circumstances under which I'm obeying it. And they backed off. But that's how high the decibel level was and how much the political intrusion in the military was going on at the time.
But what was your position?
When I was secretary of the Navy, I opened up more billets to women than any secretary of the Navy in history. But we did it the right way. I got my warfare chiefs, the three warfare chiefs, to go down and examine inside their own specialties where women should be absorbed. I had them then report to the chief of naval operations. And then the chief of naval operations reported to me. I had the uniform side make the decisions, the recommendations, and then bring them to me. This wasn't me standing up there pontificating because I was a civilian official. So when this has been done in a rational way where it works, I fully support it. When it's an intrusion from the outside, I think that not only I but other people should have questions. So where it is now? I think that from what I can see from a distance it's working well.
You were secretary of the Navy in the last couple of years of the Reagan administration. You resigned over a matter of policy, specifically budget cuts which began pulling the Navy away from the Reagan administration's goal of a 600-ship Navy. Now we have about a 290-ship Navy...
And that's on a good day.
Yes, and it's still shrinking. How would you assess the overall adequacy of the U.S. military today?
I think it's thin. It's thin; the Navy, the Army and the Marine Corps. I wouldn't have a strong comment about the Air Force. The worry that I have (is) with the Navy. How these issues are debated depends on what the national security crisis of the moment is. Five or six years ago people were trying to say that the Army was too large. But what you're seeing right now with the Navy in my view is it needs some better advocates to really argue about the strategic issues, which is where the Navy is the strongest.
The whole case for sea power.
Exactly. Force projection without having to negotiate basing rights. These sorts of things. The aircraft carrier concept is under attack again and yet every nation that becomes a major power tries to in some way replicate what we've been able to do. And it's a pretty dangerous thing to start undoing that. So the Navy needs better advocates.
What about the Army and the Marine Corps?
When (former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric) Shinseki was talking about a 10 division Army doing a 12 division job, he was right. Even before the Iraq situation. I was a proponent of downsizing the Army and the tactical Air Force, but I think particularly in the Army's case they went too far. The Marine Corps, I think the Marine Corps has done very well in terms of its force-structure size. The question is how it's being used. When you're having these guys do two or three tours over there in Iraq and the Marine Corps taking the higher casualty rates and being out where they are, that's a question of national policy rather than force.
What is your view of don't ask/don't tell as a policy and how it has worked?
I think it's a good policy for the basic reason that when you look at the confined quarters that people live in, I think you would have some extremely difficult problems if there were more overt lifestyle issues at play. I think there have always been gays in the military and there always will be. Young people living in cramped quarters need to have zones of privacy. And that's a practical issue the way that I look at it.
So how has the policy worked?
I think it has worked because it allowed people to keep zones of privacy. That's why I support it.
You recently wrote a book, "Born Fighting," on the history of the Scots/Irish contributions to this country. What are the most important things that Americans should understand about the contributions of the Scots/Irish?
The Scots-Irish basically created red-state America. I start the book at Hadrian's Wall with the formation of England vs. the formation of Scotland. And I take the migration from principally southwestern Scotland into Ulster in Northern Ireland where the Calvinists, then Presbyterians, which are now the Baptists, the Methodists and descending religions, were the soldiers for the English/Anglican structure but suffered a lot of the same disabilities that the Irish Catholics did. They migrated almost en masse, huge numbers of them, more than 250,000 migrated to the Appalachian Mountains in the 1700s. From there they moved west, became the dominant culture of the non-slave holding South, etc. They never defined themselves ethnically as much as they did by the cultural values, the family values and this sort of thing. They created populist style democracy in the United States. Andrew Jackson was the first Scots-Irish president. They created in many ways the cultural traditions of the ground forces in the United States military. Stonewall Jackson. Patton. Sergeant York. Audie Murphy. Almost all the generals in the Civil War including Ulysses Grant on the northern side were out of the culture. Gave us country music. And at the same time when you look at socioeconomic benefits, there's this misperception that white America is a monolith. It's very stratified in terms of educational attainment and income levels.
The Scots-Irish voted with the Democrats from Andrew Jackson to Vietnam. Since Vietnam, they've increasingly voted Republican. The Democrats appear not to quite get this. Can the Democrats win another national election or regularly win them unless they somehow reconnect with this culture that you write about?
They cannot. This cultural group is very much in play. Except for the Christian Right, which is based in this cultural group, it is not directly aligned with either party. But it has tended to vote Republican more because people like Karl Rove, I think, have understood the emotional buttons. But in terms of tangible socioeconomic benefits, it has not benefited by the presidencies of the last three or four presidents. The problem with the Democrats is that they got away from the Jacksonian message. The Democrats used to be the party where people went when they needed a voice on the national level. You cannot develop a national strategy based on group rights, minority rights, you can't do it. The Democrats need to understand that and get back to what they used to do.
Are you interested in running for political office?
I have been talking to people about running for the Senate next year against George Allen, as a Democrat from Virginia. I have a very good life. I'm not sure that I'm going to do that or not but I have been talking to people. Thinking about it.
Q&A: James Webb; former Secretary of the Navy
October 30, 2005
Webb, a 1968 Naval Academy graduate, was a highly decorated Marine infantry officer in Vietnam. He was an assistant secretary of defense and later secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. Webb is the author of six novels, the non-fiction "Born Fighting" and several Hollywood screenplays. He lectured at the James Bond Stockdale Leadership and Ethics Symposium at the University of San Diego Oct. 19 and was interviewed by members of the Union-Tribune's editorial board.
Question: You were a Marine infantry platoon leader and later a company commander. You were wounded twice and won a Navy Cross. You wrote "Fields of Fire," widely acclaimed as one of the best novels on Vietnam. And you became, in a sense, a spokesman for a lot of Vietnam veterans. Looking back 25 years, how has the country's view of America's Vietnam veterans changed since the 1970s?
Answer: First of all, I think with the young people there's absolutely no comprehension of what the war was about. It is very difficult to teach unless you get specialized courses in universities in this sort of thing. So basically in my experience the Vietnam War is pretty much summed up by people in a sentence or two that we went into Vietnam and it was a disaster and we left. And even on the Vietnamese side, I go to Vietnam a lot. As you know I speak Vietnamese. I can get away from the (Vietnamese government) handlers and talk to people. The official position in Vietnam is that Vietnam fought America, which is not true. The United States attempted to assist an existing government, which lost 245,000 soldiers dead on the battlefield. But I say that because that plays in to how people view Vietnam veterans. I think that the country, even back in '79 when I was working on the House Veterans Committee, the average American respected the service of the people who were in Vietnam. Today, it's like: 'yes this guy did a good job in a horrible endeavor.' There's not a comprehension of the level of performance of people who were in Vietnam. It has sort of faded. If you look at the actual battlefield results, there's no comprehension of how competent our military really was.
Do you think America's perception (of the war) has changed over the past 25 years given the boat people, human rights problems and Hanoi's dictatorship? What's history going to say about America's role in Vietnam?
One of the reasons that I stayed so involved with this over the years was because really what has been going on has been a quiet battle for how history's going to view this. And it becomes essential for people who have had different experiences, the combat experience and also stayed with this issue beyond 1973 or 1975 to see how things played out to make that case, to remind people. I had no political views when I went to Vietnam. I trusted the country's leadership. That was it. I was a 22-year-old guy trying to learn how to lead troops.
Just graduated from the Naval Academy?
Right. But I studied the history of Vietnam. I've studied warfare. But I wasn't going to get into a long political debate about whether the war was just or not. I used to tell people when I figure that out I'll talk to you about it. Right now I've got to go lead troops. After 1978 when the boat people starting showing up, you could only then really begin to discuss what it was we were attempting to do. When you have the witnesses of the truth, 50 percent dying, popping up in the water. But over the past seven or eight years, I think people who have gone into Vietnam, particularly if you're in the media or if you have some notoriety, you're usually accompanied by someone who is either your interpreter or your escort. And they are 90 percent of the time Interior Ministry people. They guide people through this. So there hasn't been a full comprehension of how that society has worked. I started going back in 1991. And it was pretty clearly still a Stalinist state in 1991. What moved Vietnam forward was when the Soviet Union fell, and they lost anywhere from $1 billion to $3 billion a year in subsidies.
And today?
The last three or four years actually have been pretty good. I was back in July and I was pretty impressed with the government leaders that I met with. This is at the province and district level. In a province where I had fought, where 10 years ago the government leaders were really hard-core America haters, apparatchiks. They've been able to groom some very competent people. So, on the one hand I don't think there's a comprehension at all of the journey. And, on the other hand, compared to some of the other countries in the region, it's fairly hopeful.
What is your take on the wisdom of our strategy in Iraq and the competence of its execution?
I was an early voice saying we shouldn't go in, that it was not connected to the war against international terrorism, that it was not among the highest national security concerns that we should be considering. My warning before we went in was basically that it was a strategic mousetrap on three different levels. One is that it would involve the nation's focus and attention and resources beyond military resources to the detriment of other interests. Second was that if you're going to decapitate a government, you would be draining your force structure. And thirdly, in the sense that we have focused so strongly on the Sunnis while the Shiites have been in a win-win since day one, and as a result we're empowering Iran.
Has that view changed any now?
No.
You don't buy the argument that it didn't used to be about terrorism and al-Qaeda but that now it is?
I think the tragedy in my view of Iraq is that it has created a lot more terrorists than would have existed if we hadn't gone in. I don't think it's a plus that Iraq is filled with terrorists right now. This isn't a zero-sum game like there's only X number of terrorists in the world and as a result we're going to draw them to the flytrap and kill them off.
There are a lot of people who say we made a terrible mistake but we will compound it if we just back out now. Do you agree?
I'm not saying we should pick up everything and leave in six months. I'm saying we made a horrendous mistake going in, in my view a strategic error. This is not a moral comment. There are a lot of situations around the world where I wouldn't shed a tear if a leader were taken out. The question is where you draw your national priorities and how that plays out. I was in Beirut as a journalist in 1983. It was an incredible experience for me looking at the lay of the land. We had an issue when I was secretary of the Navy where we tilted toward Iraq (during the Iran-Iraq war). I think I was the only guy in the Reagan administration who opposed the tilt toward Iraq in writing.
What's your recommendation on how we get out?
I think there are two things that need to happen. The first is that the administration needs to say with absolute clarity that we have no long-term aspirations in Iraq. And then the other is to reinvolve a lot of the countries that are in that region. Iran's probably too dangerous because of the way they've moved into the Shiite areas; But to reinvolve the Arab nations and invite them to participate in the solution.
In 1979 you famously wrote a piece questioning the Army's embrace of females in combat situations. Later you criticized what you saw as hysteria in the aftermath of the Navy's Tailhook scandal. Do you have any second thoughts on those issues?
My view then, and the decibel level was loud on all sides back in 1979 with the Carter administration. The Carter administration had just ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to support a political policy that did not exist. They had ordered them to support removing the ban on women in combat. That's when I wrote that piece. And the commandant of the Marine Corps at that time, Robert Barrow, who is one of my all-time Marine heroes, stood up to them. He called me after he had done it. He basically said that the deputy secretary of defense had given them that order and they had all smartly saluted except for Barrow. He said I do not believe that is a legal order, I'm going to have my counsel check on it. If it is a legal order, I'm going to explain to the Congress the circumstances under which I'm obeying it. And they backed off. But that's how high the decibel level was and how much the political intrusion in the military was going on at the time.
But what was your position?
When I was secretary of the Navy, I opened up more billets to women than any secretary of the Navy in history. But we did it the right way. I got my warfare chiefs, the three warfare chiefs, to go down and examine inside their own specialties where women should be absorbed. I had them then report to the chief of naval operations. And then the chief of naval operations reported to me. I had the uniform side make the decisions, the recommendations, and then bring them to me. This wasn't me standing up there pontificating because I was a civilian official. So when this has been done in a rational way where it works, I fully support it. When it's an intrusion from the outside, I think that not only I but other people should have questions. So where it is now? I think that from what I can see from a distance it's working well.
You were secretary of the Navy in the last couple of years of the Reagan administration. You resigned over a matter of policy, specifically budget cuts which began pulling the Navy away from the Reagan administration's goal of a 600-ship Navy. Now we have about a 290-ship Navy...
And that's on a good day.
Yes, and it's still shrinking. How would you assess the overall adequacy of the U.S. military today?
I think it's thin. It's thin; the Navy, the Army and the Marine Corps. I wouldn't have a strong comment about the Air Force. The worry that I have (is) with the Navy. How these issues are debated depends on what the national security crisis of the moment is. Five or six years ago people were trying to say that the Army was too large. But what you're seeing right now with the Navy in my view is it needs some better advocates to really argue about the strategic issues, which is where the Navy is the strongest.
The whole case for sea power.
Exactly. Force projection without having to negotiate basing rights. These sorts of things. The aircraft carrier concept is under attack again and yet every nation that becomes a major power tries to in some way replicate what we've been able to do. And it's a pretty dangerous thing to start undoing that. So the Navy needs better advocates.
What about the Army and the Marine Corps?
When (former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric) Shinseki was talking about a 10 division Army doing a 12 division job, he was right. Even before the Iraq situation. I was a proponent of downsizing the Army and the tactical Air Force, but I think particularly in the Army's case they went too far. The Marine Corps, I think the Marine Corps has done very well in terms of its force-structure size. The question is how it's being used. When you're having these guys do two or three tours over there in Iraq and the Marine Corps taking the higher casualty rates and being out where they are, that's a question of national policy rather than force.
What is your view of don't ask/don't tell as a policy and how it has worked?
I think it's a good policy for the basic reason that when you look at the confined quarters that people live in, I think you would have some extremely difficult problems if there were more overt lifestyle issues at play. I think there have always been gays in the military and there always will be. Young people living in cramped quarters need to have zones of privacy. And that's a practical issue the way that I look at it.
So how has the policy worked?
I think it has worked because it allowed people to keep zones of privacy. That's why I support it.
You recently wrote a book, "Born Fighting," on the history of the Scots/Irish contributions to this country. What are the most important things that Americans should understand about the contributions of the Scots/Irish?
The Scots-Irish basically created red-state America. I start the book at Hadrian's Wall with the formation of England vs. the formation of Scotland. And I take the migration from principally southwestern Scotland into Ulster in Northern Ireland where the Calvinists, then Presbyterians, which are now the Baptists, the Methodists and descending religions, were the soldiers for the English/Anglican structure but suffered a lot of the same disabilities that the Irish Catholics did. They migrated almost en masse, huge numbers of them, more than 250,000 migrated to the Appalachian Mountains in the 1700s. From there they moved west, became the dominant culture of the non-slave holding South, etc. They never defined themselves ethnically as much as they did by the cultural values, the family values and this sort of thing. They created populist style democracy in the United States. Andrew Jackson was the first Scots-Irish president. They created in many ways the cultural traditions of the ground forces in the United States military. Stonewall Jackson. Patton. Sergeant York. Audie Murphy. Almost all the generals in the Civil War including Ulysses Grant on the northern side were out of the culture. Gave us country music. And at the same time when you look at socioeconomic benefits, there's this misperception that white America is a monolith. It's very stratified in terms of educational attainment and income levels.
The Scots-Irish voted with the Democrats from Andrew Jackson to Vietnam. Since Vietnam, they've increasingly voted Republican. The Democrats appear not to quite get this. Can the Democrats win another national election or regularly win them unless they somehow reconnect with this culture that you write about?
They cannot. This cultural group is very much in play. Except for the Christian Right, which is based in this cultural group, it is not directly aligned with either party. But it has tended to vote Republican more because people like Karl Rove, I think, have understood the emotional buttons. But in terms of tangible socioeconomic benefits, it has not benefited by the presidencies of the last three or four presidents. The problem with the Democrats is that they got away from the Jacksonian message. The Democrats used to be the party where people went when they needed a voice on the national level. You cannot develop a national strategy based on group rights, minority rights, you can't do it. The Democrats need to understand that and get back to what they used to do.
Are you interested in running for political office?
I have been talking to people about running for the Senate next year against George Allen, as a Democrat from Virginia. I have a very good life. I'm not sure that I'm going to do that or not but I have been talking to people. Thinking about it.
From Opinion Journal:
Green Gray Areas
Books that question the conventional wisdom on the environment.
By Michael Crichton
Saturday, October 29, 2005
1. "Playing God in Yellowstone" by Alston Chase (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986).
That raw sewage bubbles out of the ground at Yellowstone National Park--after more than a century of botched conservation--would come as no surprise to Alston Chase, who 20 years ago wrote "Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park." Mr. Chase, a former professor of philosophy turned journalist, presents a clear critique of ever-changing environmental beliefs and the damage that they have caused the actual environment. As a philosopher, he is contemptuous of much conventional wisdom and the muddle-headed attitudes he calls "California cosmology."
2. "The Culture Cult" by Roger Sandall (Westview, 2001).
In "The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays," anthropologist Roger Sandall explores romantic primitivism--the myth of Eden and the Noble Savage. Mr. Sandall's histories of utopian communities (Robert Owen's New Harmony, John Humphrey Noyes's disastrous Oneida) are vivid, and his portraits of leading primitivists, from Rousseau to Mead to Levi-Strauss, are sharply drawn. This ignorant nostalgia for our tribal past ignores the truly horrific reality of tribal initiation, warfare, mutilation and human sacrifice.
3. "Man and the Natural World" by Keith Thomas (Oxford, 1984).
Don't be put off by the academic title of Keith Thomas's "Man in the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800." The book's a delight. Mr. Thomas's account is both detailed and charming as he guides the reader from the Tudor view, that nature was made for man to exploit, through the later sense that nature was to be worshipped and cherished (such that trees became pets and aristocrats gave names to their great estate trees and said good-night to them each evening). Still later came the Romantic preference for untouched nature and rough settings, a rarified taste that required "a long course of aesthetic education." At every turn, Mr. Thomas emphasizes the contradictions between belief and behavior.
4. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
No one should miss Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist." The author, a Danish statistician and former Greenpeace activist, set out to disprove the views of the late Julian Simon, who claimed that environmental fears were baseless and that the world was actually improving. To Mr. Lomborg's surprise, he found that Simon was mostly right. Mr. Lomborg's text is calm and devastating to established dogma.
5. "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dörner (Perseus, 1998).
Future environmentalists will heed Dietrich Dörner's "The Logic of Failure." Mr. Dörner is a cognitive psychologist who invited academic experts to manage the computer simulations of various environments (an African herding society, a town in Maine). Most experts made things worse. Those managers who did well gathered information before acting, thought in terms of complex-systems interactions instead of simple linear cause and effect, reviewed their progress, looked for unanticipated consequences, and corrected course often. Those who did badly relied on a fixed theoretical approach, did not correct course and blamed others when things went wrong. Mr. Dörner concludes that our failure to manage complex systems such as the environment reflects bad habits of thought, overreliance on theory and lazy procedures. His book is brief, cheerful and profound.
Mr. Crichton is author of the novels "State of Fear" and "Jurassic Park," among many others, and creator of the television series "ER."
Green Gray Areas
Books that question the conventional wisdom on the environment.
By Michael Crichton
Saturday, October 29, 2005
1. "Playing God in Yellowstone" by Alston Chase (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986).
That raw sewage bubbles out of the ground at Yellowstone National Park--after more than a century of botched conservation--would come as no surprise to Alston Chase, who 20 years ago wrote "Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park." Mr. Chase, a former professor of philosophy turned journalist, presents a clear critique of ever-changing environmental beliefs and the damage that they have caused the actual environment. As a philosopher, he is contemptuous of much conventional wisdom and the muddle-headed attitudes he calls "California cosmology."
2. "The Culture Cult" by Roger Sandall (Westview, 2001).
In "The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays," anthropologist Roger Sandall explores romantic primitivism--the myth of Eden and the Noble Savage. Mr. Sandall's histories of utopian communities (Robert Owen's New Harmony, John Humphrey Noyes's disastrous Oneida) are vivid, and his portraits of leading primitivists, from Rousseau to Mead to Levi-Strauss, are sharply drawn. This ignorant nostalgia for our tribal past ignores the truly horrific reality of tribal initiation, warfare, mutilation and human sacrifice.
3. "Man and the Natural World" by Keith Thomas (Oxford, 1984).
Don't be put off by the academic title of Keith Thomas's "Man in the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800." The book's a delight. Mr. Thomas's account is both detailed and charming as he guides the reader from the Tudor view, that nature was made for man to exploit, through the later sense that nature was to be worshipped and cherished (such that trees became pets and aristocrats gave names to their great estate trees and said good-night to them each evening). Still later came the Romantic preference for untouched nature and rough settings, a rarified taste that required "a long course of aesthetic education." At every turn, Mr. Thomas emphasizes the contradictions between belief and behavior.
4. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
No one should miss Bjørn Lomborg's "The Skeptical Environmentalist." The author, a Danish statistician and former Greenpeace activist, set out to disprove the views of the late Julian Simon, who claimed that environmental fears were baseless and that the world was actually improving. To Mr. Lomborg's surprise, he found that Simon was mostly right. Mr. Lomborg's text is calm and devastating to established dogma.
5. "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dörner (Perseus, 1998).
Future environmentalists will heed Dietrich Dörner's "The Logic of Failure." Mr. Dörner is a cognitive psychologist who invited academic experts to manage the computer simulations of various environments (an African herding society, a town in Maine). Most experts made things worse. Those managers who did well gathered information before acting, thought in terms of complex-systems interactions instead of simple linear cause and effect, reviewed their progress, looked for unanticipated consequences, and corrected course often. Those who did badly relied on a fixed theoretical approach, did not correct course and blamed others when things went wrong. Mr. Dörner concludes that our failure to manage complex systems such as the environment reflects bad habits of thought, overreliance on theory and lazy procedures. His book is brief, cheerful and profound.
Mr. Crichton is author of the novels "State of Fear" and "Jurassic Park," among many others, and creator of the television series "ER."
The New McGovernites Will Fail to Win Again
By John Leo
The editor of The New Republic suggested the other day that "the new liberal political culture emerging on the Internet" looks a lot like the McGovernite revolution that descended on the Democratic Party in 1972. In a lecture at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Peter Beinart said the mostly young Internet activists are clearly taking over the party.
If so, this would be the first ray of sunshine for conservatives and Republicans in almost a year. The McGovern movement severely damaged the party, pushing it toward four presidential defeats in five tries, until Bill Clinton won by dragging the party back to the center in 1992. If the Internet people had prevailed in 2004, Howard Dean would have won the nomination and then been buried in an enormous landslide, just like George McGovern.
Beinart wrote one of the most impressive magazine articles of 2004, a 6,000-word piece on the failure of liberalism to reshape itself in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of Islamofascism. He was highly critical of liberal "softs" who tolerate Michael Moore and MoveOn.org, the potent Internet-based group that has urged antiwar liberals to cooperate with the totalitarian left, specifically with International Answer, a front for the World Workers Party, which has defended Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and North Korean madman Kim Jong Il.
Beinart called on liberals to cut themselves off from totalitarian movements and from people who imagine that the terrorist threat is minor or nonexistent, just as mainstream liberals in 1947 girded themselves for the Cold War by ejecting pro-communist and soft-on-communism types like the followers of Henry Wallace.
That article was blunt. The speech last week was more circumspect and polite -- no harsh words for the soft-on-totalitarians types like the George Soros-financed activists at MoveOn. Still, Beinart fears that the new activists are "largely in the dark about what they believe" and will come to power without the ideas they need to govern.
Let's assume that Beinart is right and that the Deaniacs are today's McGovernites. This would be an excellent time to ponder what the McGovern reformers did to the party. The changes at the 1972 convention removed the power of the city bosses and party regulars to determine the nominee and, in theory at least, increased the number of Democrats involved in selecting nominees. In reality, though, the reformers, through rule changes and some stealth and manipulation, stacked the convention and radically changed the party.
Affluent, well-educated liberals were in -- a "new elite," as The Washington Post termed it. Party regulars, officeholders and blue-collar Democrats were out. New York, a union state, had only three union members as delegates, though it had at least nine members of the gay liberation movement. No farmer was a member of the Iowa delegation. Only 30 of the 255 Democratic members of Congress were selected as delegates. A full 39 percent of delegates had attended graduate school. Over a third of the white delegates were classified as secularists, compared with 5 percent of the general population.
The reformers installed rough quotas for blacks, women, Hispanics, and people ages 18 to 25. The total of female delegates tripled, to 43 percent, with heavy emphasis on supporters of abortion and the hard-edged feminism represented by Bella Abzug.
Jack Newfield and Joe Flaherty, both pro-McGovern Village Voice reporters from working-class backgrounds, asked, "Where are the quotas for Irish, Italians and Poles?" "The McGovernite movement," wrote Murray Rothbard, a prominent libertarian, "is, in its very nature, a kick in the gut to Middle America."
The regulars who picked candidates before the McGovern revolution always looked for a mainstream candidate who could win. McGovern's activists had to be mobilized and sustained by ideological appeals that put the movement and the candidate decidedly left of the electorate. So McGovern couldn't have won.
The McGovern reform commission and the people who changed the party in 1972 wrought lasting damage, and not just to Democrats: They helped mightily to create the modern split between red America and blue America. Many members of disfavored groups -- Catholics, Southerners and much of the white working class and lower-middle class -- decamped for the Republican Party, while the Democrats emerged more clearly visible as the party of well-off liberals, the poor, identity and grievance groups, secularists and the cultural elite. A second coming of McGovernite guerrillas wouldn't do much to improve that image.
By John Leo
The editor of The New Republic suggested the other day that "the new liberal political culture emerging on the Internet" looks a lot like the McGovernite revolution that descended on the Democratic Party in 1972. In a lecture at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Peter Beinart said the mostly young Internet activists are clearly taking over the party.
If so, this would be the first ray of sunshine for conservatives and Republicans in almost a year. The McGovern movement severely damaged the party, pushing it toward four presidential defeats in five tries, until Bill Clinton won by dragging the party back to the center in 1992. If the Internet people had prevailed in 2004, Howard Dean would have won the nomination and then been buried in an enormous landslide, just like George McGovern.
Beinart wrote one of the most impressive magazine articles of 2004, a 6,000-word piece on the failure of liberalism to reshape itself in the wake of 9/11 and the rise of Islamofascism. He was highly critical of liberal "softs" who tolerate Michael Moore and MoveOn.org, the potent Internet-based group that has urged antiwar liberals to cooperate with the totalitarian left, specifically with International Answer, a front for the World Workers Party, which has defended Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and North Korean madman Kim Jong Il.
Beinart called on liberals to cut themselves off from totalitarian movements and from people who imagine that the terrorist threat is minor or nonexistent, just as mainstream liberals in 1947 girded themselves for the Cold War by ejecting pro-communist and soft-on-communism types like the followers of Henry Wallace.
That article was blunt. The speech last week was more circumspect and polite -- no harsh words for the soft-on-totalitarians types like the George Soros-financed activists at MoveOn. Still, Beinart fears that the new activists are "largely in the dark about what they believe" and will come to power without the ideas they need to govern.
Let's assume that Beinart is right and that the Deaniacs are today's McGovernites. This would be an excellent time to ponder what the McGovern reformers did to the party. The changes at the 1972 convention removed the power of the city bosses and party regulars to determine the nominee and, in theory at least, increased the number of Democrats involved in selecting nominees. In reality, though, the reformers, through rule changes and some stealth and manipulation, stacked the convention and radically changed the party.
Affluent, well-educated liberals were in -- a "new elite," as The Washington Post termed it. Party regulars, officeholders and blue-collar Democrats were out. New York, a union state, had only three union members as delegates, though it had at least nine members of the gay liberation movement. No farmer was a member of the Iowa delegation. Only 30 of the 255 Democratic members of Congress were selected as delegates. A full 39 percent of delegates had attended graduate school. Over a third of the white delegates were classified as secularists, compared with 5 percent of the general population.
The reformers installed rough quotas for blacks, women, Hispanics, and people ages 18 to 25. The total of female delegates tripled, to 43 percent, with heavy emphasis on supporters of abortion and the hard-edged feminism represented by Bella Abzug.
Jack Newfield and Joe Flaherty, both pro-McGovern Village Voice reporters from working-class backgrounds, asked, "Where are the quotas for Irish, Italians and Poles?" "The McGovernite movement," wrote Murray Rothbard, a prominent libertarian, "is, in its very nature, a kick in the gut to Middle America."
The regulars who picked candidates before the McGovern revolution always looked for a mainstream candidate who could win. McGovern's activists had to be mobilized and sustained by ideological appeals that put the movement and the candidate decidedly left of the electorate. So McGovern couldn't have won.
The McGovern reform commission and the people who changed the party in 1972 wrought lasting damage, and not just to Democrats: They helped mightily to create the modern split between red America and blue America. Many members of disfavored groups -- Catholics, Southerners and much of the white working class and lower-middle class -- decamped for the Republican Party, while the Democrats emerged more clearly visible as the party of well-off liberals, the poor, identity and grievance groups, secularists and the cultural elite. A second coming of McGovernite guerrillas wouldn't do much to improve that image.
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