Rule of Reason Blog

Watching the video, it was hard to determine if North Carolina Representative and Democrat Bob Etheridge was drunk or sober. There was a nasty, tell-tale slur in his words that suggested alcoholic inebriation. But, on the other hand, that might have been the influence of another notorious intoxicant: political power and its constant companion, arrogance. Or, it might have just been his naturally abrupt and abrasive Southern speaking style, coupled with a not-too wholesome character. Did the students detect in him an odor of alcohol, or an odor of sanctimony? Or a combination of the aromas? He was leaving a Nancy Pelosi fundraiser. Only the college students whom he attacked would know for sure. Etheridge issued an “apology” when news of the incident spread like wildfire. His public statement was not specifically addressed to the students, but to the “public.” So, it was less an apology, and more an expression of panic. Etheridge regrets, but does not apologize. “I have seen the video posted on several blogs. I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved. Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.” Not exactly a tear-jerker. He has “always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect.” Except when he thinks they are questioning his character and political leanings. His manhandling of the student did not “justify a poor response.” If anyone else had tried such a “poor response” on the student, he could have been arrested for and charged with assault. He will “always work to promote a civil public discourse,” except when he’s in a nasty mood and feeling touchy about his reelection prospects and doesn’t feel like having discourse with the public. Etheridge was addressed -- not accosted -- on a public street by the students. They didn’t approach or stalk him. He approached them, and was “ambushed” by an inconvenient question. He wasn’t the first. Other Democrats have been “ambushed” and ignored or told the questioners to get themselves to a nunnery. He was elected to represent his district, but, like many of his Democratic and Republican brethren, behaves like he owns the seat and needn’t answer to well-dressed and well-mannered strangers who ask him a simple question. “Do you fully support the Obama agenda?” The students continued to call him “Sir” even when the representative got violent. Granted, it was a loaded question. The students were angling for a hypothetical “Yes, I fully support the Obama agenda,” which would have been an admission of guilt for endorsing an agenda that is playing havoc with the economy and whittling down our liberties to zero. Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, and once on Etheridge’s staff, had this to say about the North Carolinian‘s statement: “I’ve known Bob Etheridge for more than a thirteen years and I am proud to have worked for him. He is one of the most honorable people I know. Everyone makes mistakes, and I’m proud of Bob for taking responsibility and apologizing for his.” But, it wasn’t an apology. It was false humility tailored for voter consumption. Democrats “don’t need no stinking badges.” They’re the majority, and they’ll do as they like. The “Obama agenda” has been so excoriated by the blogosphere that Democrats have become super-sensitive to any questions about it. Was he really “ambushed” by the college students, as some MSM commentators charge? The students apparently were working for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government news outlet. Etheridge couldn’t have known that at the time, otherwise he wouldn’t have kept repeating “Who are you? I want to know who you are,.” all the while manhandling the student. Breitbart’s troops are famous -- some say notorious -- for entrapping on video politicians, government employees, and professional parasites with a line into government money, or anyone who deserves to be snared in behavior, attitude and speech, and all of whom are complicit in the growth of the federal government and the ongoing diminution of freedom. Etheridge’s voting record is spectacularly undistinguished. That is, it is nearly the straight Obama agenda party platform. The college students couldn’t be blamed for loading their question. Of all his nearly one hundred and ninety “yes” and “no” votes, only one stood out. In April 2001 he voted “yes” on eliminating the estate or “death” tax. But his voting record puts him solidly in the Obama camp. And as a Southern Christian “new” Democrat, his stances on abortion, free trade, TARP, and other issues are as fuzzy and bollixed as any other “moderate” Democrat’s. Every member of Congress should be similarly “ambushed.” President Obama should be “ambushed.” It is practically the only means left of drawing out the true character and attitude of those who would be kings, queens, and Congressional courtiers. We, the people, have a right to know who they are. Cross-posted from Metablog

It is a whispering campaign to counter the harmful -- shall we say “hateful"? -- effects of freedom of speech and the liberty of inquiry. To whom are they harmful and hateful? To President Barack Obama. To his administration. To Congress. To tribal “communities” of every stripe. They know that the truth is out there, about them, about their actions, about their motives, and it must be suppressed. -- albeit without saying that it is being censored. The first evidence of Obama’s true intentions was the overt but clumsy invitation to Americans last summer to report via email to the White House any “fishy” anti-administration talk by other Americans. Obama received a stinging, well-deserved rebuke, one delivered chiefly in the Internet’s blogosphere and which spread like slow molasses to the mainstream media, which did not welcome a rebuke of their copacetic favorite and sometime messiah. The White House’s “rat-on-your-neighbor” site was taken down, but not before first crashing under the weight of countless thousands of retorts from Americans to Obama to mind his own business. But Obama and Company haven’t given up. They and Congress believe their “business” is to “run” the country, and that includes filtering and censoring what Americans read, think, and say. Like Muslims who object to images of Mohammed, their feelings are hurt and their sensibilities offended by criticism and caricature. Negative portrayals of Obama and his administration and his ilk in Congress are considered to be abrasive and secularly “blasphemous.“ Obama’s “approval ratings” are plummeting and Congress’s promise to shatter the floor. It’s all the fault of the First Amendment. It must be emasculated, qualified, and delegitimitized. Their ideological clones in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are assiduously searching for a means to impose censorship without calling it censorship. They are moved by a fear that the Tea Parties and an indiscriminate and unobstructed access to news other than what is reported by the MSM have demonstrated a power that threatens the hegemony of collectivism. They wish to silence anyone and everyone who pursues and exposes the truth. The FTC is casting about for the means to “save” journalism, that is, the journalism it approves of. That is, the Commission is searching for a justification for meddling. It concedes that Internet journalism exists, but by implication discounts it as “true” journalism. After all, it isn’t regulated or subsidized by the government; ergo, its news is highly suspect. What it wishes to do is find a way to bolster “traditional” news coverage and reportage, whatever that may be, for the concept is nowhere defined in its Draft report. They want a captive, obedient electorate as dumbed down and indoctrinated exclusively by government-approved news and government-vetted “journalists,” as hapless and helpless as school children instructed in the ways of Islam and the environment and “Native American” culture, while fed miniscule portions of Howard Zinn-style American history that guarantee children will grow up to be subservient tax-cows and “good,” selfless citizens. One of those means is to tax the blogosphere and force it to subsidize its competitors. Another is to establish a “public fund” to subsidize newspapers, other approved media, and journalists by taxing the broadcast spectrum, consumer electronics, commercial advertising, and cell phone ISPs. Still another is to rewrite IRS rules to better protect newspapers and broadcast stations from the Internet. Nine pages of The Federal Trade Commission Staff Discussion Draft of Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism (the Draft) are devoted to how the IRS can further perpetuate “traditional” journalism (pp. 21-29). Indeed, the IRS plays a heavy-handed role in what may be defined as public interest-oriented news and mere “commercial” news. If The New York Times, for example, claims that it is chiefly a “public service” and can prove it caters to the “public interest,“ while its editorializing is just a sideline, then it qualifies for tax exemptions or credits (in other words, a subsidy or tax break enjoyed by few other papers). If a newspaper’s chief purpose is to promulgate an ideology and is not published by a certified non-profit organization (and it‘s the IRS that decides what is a “non-profit“ organization), then it gets no exemptions or credits. The FTC Draft is essentially a 47-page excursion into fantasy land. Journalism has already “reinvented” itself without any government support. How many newspapers, for example, do not now have free or advertiser-paid or subscriber-paid online daily editions? The only “support” the government can legitimately provide is to stay out of it. The FTC staff discussions, however, created a smorgasbord of policy options to recommend (to whom? Congress? The White House? Cass Sunstein? Henry Waxman?). All of them require government action. Defenders of government action make the specious claim that the government has always been involved in promoting journalism and newspapers. Besides, the Draft assures the public, the report only seeks to prompt discussion of whether to recommend policy changes to support the ongoing “reinvention” of journalism, and, if so, which specific proposals appear most useful, feasible, platform-neutral, resistant to bias, and unlikely to cause unintended consequences in addressing emerging gaps in news coverage. The FTC has only discussed “suggestions,” not concrete plans of action. “These are nothing more or less than information gathering meetings,” says FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan, who adds that the agency has no current plans other than to publish the hearing results this fall. Beyond that, points out Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, protestations aside, government has played a role in encouraging a healthy press from the dawn of the republic. “First, we had an ink subsidy and then we had a postal subsidy both of which helped a free press to flourish,” she says. Yes, Miss Graves, the government played a role in encouraging the press -- by largely not meddling in it except for the “ink subsidy” and the postal subsidy. (I could find no reference anywhere about an “ink subsidy,” unless Graves was referring to a tax break on printer’s ink purchases or to a tariff or excise tax break on its importation.) Much of the Draft seems heavily influenced by the findings and recommendations of a USC/Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism study, “Public Policy and Funding the News.” It claims that the Internet and its blogging news reporters have benefited from government investment in development of the Internet, and will benefit again from TARPs I and II. Long before the United States was founded, the Postal Service was subsidizing the news business. It was in good measure the free-mailing privileges conferred by many postmasters that allowed a robust network of colonial newspapers to emerge. George Washington wanted all newspapers, in fact, to have 100 percent subsidized mailing costs. The Postal Act of 1792 rejected the idea of a total subsidy, but it codified highly subsidized and extremely low rates. What brought a halt to publishers’ receiving 75 percent discounts on their mailed news products was the financial crisis that engulfed the Postal Service in the late 1960s.(p. 11) ( Italics mine.) These are some of the transparent rationalizations that seek to sanction “public funding” of newspapers, the broadcast spectrum, and the Internet. I italicized the first sentence of this vacuous rationalization because the “Postal Service” could not have predated the country’s founding. There was indeed a British Crown-controlled postal “service” but its purpose was not to foster the growth of colonial newspapers. See the USPS site for clarification of the purpose of the Crown and post-Revolutionary postal services, and Benjamin Franklin’s role in them. And for a history of the development of the Internet and the government’s role in its initial role as a tool of national defense (it did little to develop the commercial potential), go here. It does not follow that if, historically, government had some role in the growth of news communications, it should “monitor” the “reinvention” of it by taking control of it. The Annenberg study offers recommendations as woozy and ill-defined as those in the Draft. As policymakers debate how to respond to the fast decline of the news business, we offer the following principles as guidance: • First and foremost, do no harm. A cycle of powerful innovation is under way. To the extent possible, government should avoid retarding the emergence of new models of news-gathering. • Second, the government should help promote innovation, as it did when the Department of Defense funded the research that created the Internet or when NASA funded the creation of satellites that made cable TV and direct radio and TV possible. • Third, for commercial media, government-supported mechanisms that are content neutral – such as copyright protections, postal subsidies and taxes – are preferable to those that call upon the government to fund specific news outlets, publications or programs. However policymakers proceed, they should do so based on facts rather than myths. The government has always supported the commercial news business. It does so today. Unless the government takes affirmative action, though, the level of support is almost certain to decline at this important time in the history of journalism. (p. 16 ) In short, the study does not question a government role in journalism. It does not specifically oppose regulation of any media. It makes ambiguous suggestions that government “do no harm.” It seems to say: Wait until someone has a brilliant idea and a developed innovation; then you can jump in and control it for the “public good.” Whether or not that would be “doing harm” will be just someone’s subjective opinion. The “public interest” comes first. The FCC is more obviously out to control speech, that is, to prohibit speech it deems offensive, specifically “hate speech.” But, as one blogger pointed out, the protection of “hate speech” is what the First Amendment is all about. No one has ever taken exception to “love speech” or demanded that it be censored. The FCC is mulling over the petition of a collection of various collectivist groups, the “National Hispanic Media Coalition” (NHMC), to “monitor” speech on the radio and on the Internet, with a “view” to regulating its content and intent. But, to regulate or banish “hate speech” -- whose ever definition of the term it may be -- is to regulate or banish all speech. NMHC’s Petition urges the Commission to examine the extent and effects of hate speech in media, including the likely link between hate speech and hate crimes, and to explore non-regulatory ways to counteract its negative impacts. As NHMC has awaited Commission action, hate, extremism and misinformation have been on the rise, and even more so in the past week as the media has focused on Arizona’s passage of one of the one of the harshest pieces of anti-Latino in this country’s history, SB1070. There are forty-one more references to “hate speech” in the petition, the Future of Media and Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age, while the phrase “hate, extremism and misinformation” appears four times. SB1070, however, is merely a replicant of the U.S. law, which remains haphazardly enforced. Again, nowhere in the petition are hate speech and misinformation defined. Their meanings are up for grabs by the most vocal and “victimized” communities (read tribes, groups, gangs). And, there is no “non-regulatory way” to “counteract” any speech, hateful or not, not without the use of government force. “Counteraction” means action, which means force, which can be either withholding a radio station’s license, or pressure put on a station’s sponsors, or just Hugo Chavez’s thuggish way of “counteracting” hate speech. If “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment, the recent Helen Thomas episode has demonstrated one of the practical values of that Amendment: it allows individuals to reveal their philosophy, their morality, and their souls for all to see. One may agree with them, disagree with them, or ignore them. But, readers, viewers, and listeners should keep this in mind if they see anything benign in government regulation of speech: One of its purposes is to rig the airwaves, newspapers, television, and the Internet so that one cannot ignore its own propaganda, or know any truth but what the government says it is. How would one be able to judge or determine the truth? That would entail thinking, which is precisely what the government doesn’t want anyone to do. Just believe, and obey. Paul Hsieh’s article on the FCC and FTC’s “probe” of the media, "Use It or Lose It," outlines the necessary intellectual actions to uphold freedom of speech: If bloggers, independent journalists, and ordinary thinking Americans value our free speech, then we must do the following: 1. We must articulate and defend a proper definition of free speech and of censorship. 2. We must defend free speech on the proper grounds of individual rights, rather than on utilitarian grounds that it promotes some “social good.” This includes defending free speech in principle, even when some people express views we consider odious. For liberals, this includes defending speech they may find bigoted or offensive. For social conservatives, this includes defending speech promoting alternative lifestyles they may find morally repugnant. 3. We must defend the principle of free speech not just in politics but throughout the full range of our culture — including science, art, and philosophy. We must defend the freedom of individuals to criticize another’s scientific or religious views as vigorously as their right to debate banking regulations. “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom,” wrote Ayn Rand. “Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”* The current administration has made clear its attacks on intellectual freedom, political freedom, and economic freedom. An attack on one has always implicitly meant an attack on the other two. This is what those who would defend the First Amendment must also understand. They must grasp that indivisible integration of freedoms. One cannot uphold freedom of speech to the exclusion of the other preconditions of it, as liberals have done for over a century, which is uphold freedom of speech while advocating the seizure or control of property. Logical consistency required that they now attack what they once defended. Their more ideologically consistent and activist brethren on the Left are only too happy to oblige. *”For the New Intellectual,” in For the New Intellectual (1961). New York: Signet/Penguin Books, p. 25. Cross-posted from Metablog

It is a whispering campaign to counter the harmful -- shall we say “hateful"? -- effects of freedom of speech and the liberty of inquiry. To whom are they harmful and hateful? To President Barack Obama. To his administration. To Congress. To tribal “communities” of every stripe. They know that the truth is out there, about them, about their actions, about their motives, and it must be suppressed. -- albeit without saying that it is being censored. The first evidence of Obama’s true intentions was the overt but clumsy invitation to Americans last summer to report via email to the White House any “fishy” anti-administration talk by other Americans. Obama received a stinging, well-deserved rebuke, one delivered chiefly in the Internet’s blogosphere and which spread like slow molasses to the mainstream media, which did not welcome a rebuke of their copacetic favorite and sometime messiah. The White House’s “rat-on-your-neighbor” site was taken down, but not before first crashing under the weight of countless thousands of retorts from Americans to Obama to mind his own business. But Obama and Company haven’t given up. They and Congress believe their “business” is to “run” the country, and that includes filtering and censoring what Americans read, think, and say. Like Muslims who object to images of Mohammed, their feelings are hurt and their sensibilities offended by criticism and caricature. Negative portrayals of Obama and his administration and his ilk in Congress are considered to be abrasive and secularly “blasphemous.“ Obama’s “approval ratings” are plummeting and Congress’s promise to shatter the floor. It’s all the fault of the First Amendment. It must be emasculated, qualified, and delegitimitized. Their ideological clones in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are assiduously searching for a means to impose censorship without calling it censorship. They are moved by a fear that the Tea Parties and an indiscriminate and unobstructed access to news other than what is reported by the MSM have demonstrated a power that threatens the hegemony of collectivism. They wish to silence anyone and everyone who pursues and exposes the truth. The FTC is casting about for the means to “save” journalism, that is, the journalism it approves of. That is, the Commission is searching for a justification for meddling. It concedes that Internet journalism exists, but by implication discounts it as “true” journalism. After all, it isn’t regulated or subsidized by the government; ergo, its news is highly suspect. What it wishes to do is find a way to bolster “traditional” news coverage and reportage, whatever that may be, for the concept is nowhere defined in its Draft report. They want a captive, obedient electorate as dumbed down and indoctrinated exclusively by government-approved news and government-vetted “journalists,” as hapless and helpless as school children instructed in the ways of Islam and the environment and “Native American” culture, while fed miniscule portions of Howard Zinn-style American history that guarantee children will grow up to be subservient tax-cows and “good,” selfless citizens. One of those means is to tax the blogosphere and force it to subsidize its competitors. Another is to establish a “public fund” to subsidize newspapers, other approved media, and journalists by taxing the broadcast spectrum, consumer electronics, commercial advertising, and cell phone ISPs. Still another is to rewrite IRS rules to better protect newspapers and broadcast stations from the Internet. Nine pages of The Federal Trade Commission Staff Discussion Draft of Potential Policy Recommendations to Support the Reinvention of Journalism (the Draft) are devoted to how the IRS can further perpetuate “traditional” journalism (pp. 21-29). Indeed, the IRS plays a heavy-handed role in what may be defined as public interest-oriented news and mere “commercial” news. If The New York Times, for example, claims that it is chiefly a “public service” and can prove it caters to the “public interest,“ while its editorializing is just a sideline, then it qualifies for tax exemptions or credits (in other words, a subsidy or tax break enjoyed by few other papers). If a newspaper’s chief purpose is to promulgate an ideology and is not published by a certified non-profit organization (and it‘s the IRS that decides what is a “non-profit“ organization), then it gets no exemptions or credits. The FTC Draft is essentially a 47-page excursion into fantasy land. Journalism has already “reinvented” itself without any government support. How many newspapers, for example, do not now have free or advertiser-paid or subscriber-paid online daily editions? The only “support” the government can legitimately provide is to stay out of it. The FTC staff discussions, however, created a smorgasbord of policy options to recommend (to whom? Congress? The White House? Cass Sunstein? Henry Waxman?). All of them require government action. Defenders of government action make the specious claim that the government has always been involved in promoting journalism and newspapers. Besides, the Draft assures the public, the report only seeks to prompt discussion of whether to recommend policy changes to support the ongoing “reinvention” of journalism, and, if so, which specific proposals appear most useful, feasible, platform-neutral, resistant to bias, and unlikely to cause unintended consequences in addressing emerging gaps in news coverage. The FTC has only discussed “suggestions,” not concrete plans of action. “These are nothing more or less than information gathering meetings,” says FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan, who adds that the agency has no current plans other than to publish the hearing results this fall. Beyond that, points out Lisa Graves, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, protestations aside, government has played a role in encouraging a healthy press from the dawn of the republic. “First, we had an ink subsidy and then we had a postal subsidy both of which helped a free press to flourish,” she says. Yes, Miss Graves, the government played a role in encouraging the press -- by largely not meddling in it except for the “ink subsidy” and the postal subsidy. (I could find no reference anywhere about an “ink subsidy,” unless Graves was referring to a tax break on printer’s ink purchases or to a tariff or excise tax break on its importation.) Much of the Draft seems heavily influenced by the findings and recommendations of a USC/Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism study, “Public Policy and Funding the News.” It claims that the Internet and its blogging news reporters have benefited from government investment in development of the Internet, and will benefit again from TARPs I and II. Long before the United States was founded, the Postal Service was subsidizing the news business. It was in good measure the free-mailing privileges conferred by many postmasters that allowed a robust network of colonial newspapers to emerge. George Washington wanted all newspapers, in fact, to have 100 percent subsidized mailing costs. The Postal Act of 1792 rejected the idea of a total subsidy, but it codified highly subsidized and extremely low rates. What brought a halt to publishers’ receiving 75 percent discounts on their mailed news products was the financial crisis that engulfed the Postal Service in the late 1960s.(p. 11) ( Italics mine.) These are some of the transparent rationalizations that seek to sanction “public funding” of newspapers, the broadcast spectrum, and the Internet. I italicized the first sentence of this vacuous rationalization because the “Postal Service” could not have predated the country’s founding. There was indeed a British Crown-controlled postal “service” but its purpose was not to foster the growth of colonial newspapers. See the USPS site for clarification of the purpose of the Crown and post-Revolutionary postal services, and Benjamin Franklin’s role in them. And for a history of the development of the Internet and the government’s role in its initial role as a tool of national defense (it did little to develop the commercial potential), go here. It does not follow that if, historically, government had some role in the growth of news communications, it should “monitor” the “reinvention” of it by taking control of it. The Annenberg study offers recommendations as woozy and ill-defined as those in the Draft. As policymakers debate how to respond to the fast decline of the news business, we offer the following principles as guidance: • First and foremost, do no harm. A cycle of powerful innovation is under way. To the extent possible, government should avoid retarding the emergence of new models of news-gathering. • Second, the government should help promote innovation, as it did when the Department of Defense funded the research that created the Internet or when NASA funded the creation of satellites that made cable TV and direct radio and TV possible. • Third, for commercial media, government-supported mechanisms that are content neutral – such as copyright protections, postal subsidies and taxes – are preferable to those that call upon the government to fund specific news outlets, publications or programs. However policymakers proceed, they should do so based on facts rather than myths. The government has always supported the commercial news business. It does so today. Unless the government takes affirmative action, though, the level of support is almost certain to decline at this important time in the history of journalism. (p. 16 ) In short, the study does not question a government role in journalism. It does not specifically oppose regulation of any media. It makes ambiguous suggestions that government “do no harm.” It seems to say: Wait until someone has a brilliant idea and a developed innovation; then you can jump in and control it for the “public good.” Whether or not that would be “doing harm” will be just someone’s subjective opinion. The “public interest” comes first. The FCC is more obviously out to control speech, that is, to prohibit speech it deems offensive, specifically “hate speech.” But, as one blogger pointed out, the protection of “hate speech” is what the First Amendment is all about. No one has ever taken exception to “love speech” or demanded that it be censored. The FCC is mulling over the petition of a collection of various collectivist groups, the “National Hispanic Media Coalition” (NHMC), to “monitor” speech on the radio and on the Internet, with a “view” to regulating its content and intent. But, to regulate or banish “hate speech” -- whose ever definition of the term it may be -- is to regulate or banish all speech. NMHC’s Petition urges the Commission to examine the extent and effects of hate speech in media, including the likely link between hate speech and hate crimes, and to explore non-regulatory ways to counteract its negative impacts. As NHMC has awaited Commission action, hate, extremism and misinformation have been on the rise, and even more so in the past week as the media has focused on Arizona’s passage of one of the one of the harshest pieces of anti-Latino in this country’s history, SB1070. There are forty-one more references to “hate speech” in the petition, the Future of Media and Information Needs of Communities in a Digital Age, while the phrase “hate, extremism and misinformation” appears four times. SB1070, however, is merely a replicant of the U.S. law, which remains haphazardly enforced. Again, nowhere in the petition are hate speech and misinformation defined. Their meanings are up for grabs by the most vocal and “victimized” communities (read tribes, groups, gangs). And, there is no “non-regulatory way” to “counteract” any speech, hateful or not, not without the use of government force. “Counteraction” means action, which means force, which can be either withholding a radio station’s license, or pressure put on a station’s sponsors, or just Hugo Chavez’s thuggish way of “counteracting” hate speech. If “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment, the recent Helen Thomas episode has demonstrated one of the practical values of that Amendment: it allows individuals to reveal their philosophy, their morality, and their souls for all to see. One may agree with them, disagree with them, or ignore them. But, readers, viewers, and listeners should keep this in mind if they see anything benign in government regulation of speech: One of its purposes is to rig the airwaves, newspapers, television, and the Internet so that one cannot ignore its own propaganda, or know any truth but what the government says it is. How would one be able to judge or determine the truth? That would entail thinking, which is precisely what the government doesn’t want anyone to do. Just believe, and obey. Paul Hsieh’s article on the FCC and FTC’s “probe” of the media, "Use It or Lose It," outlines the necessary intellectual actions to uphold freedom of speech: If bloggers, independent journalists, and ordinary thinking Americans value our free speech, then we must do the following: 1. We must articulate and defend a proper definition of free speech and of censorship. 2. We must defend free speech on the proper grounds of individual rights, rather than on utilitarian grounds that it promotes some “social good.” This includes defending free speech in principle, even when some people express views we consider odious. For liberals, this includes defending speech they may find bigoted or offensive. For social conservatives, this includes defending speech promoting alternative lifestyles they may find morally repugnant. 3. We must defend the principle of free speech not just in politics but throughout the full range of our culture — including science, art, and philosophy. We must defend the freedom of individuals to criticize another’s scientific or religious views as vigorously as their right to debate banking regulations. “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom,” wrote Ayn Rand. “Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.”* The current administration has made clear its attacks on intellectual freedom, political freedom, and economic freedom. An attack on one has always implicitly meant an attack on the other two. This is what those who would defend the First Amendment must also understand. They must grasp that indivisible integration of freedoms. One cannot uphold freedom of speech to the exclusion of the other preconditions of it, as liberals have done for over a century, which is uphold freedom of speech while advocating the seizure or control of property. Logical consistency required that they now attack what they once defended. Their more ideologically consistent and activist brethren on the Left are only too happy to oblige. *”For the New Intellectual,” in For the New Intellectual (1961). New York: Signet/Penguin Books, p. 25. Cross-posted from Metablog

The organizers of the “Freedom Flotilla” thought they could shame Israel into lifting its blockade of Gaza by making it concede that the “humanitarian” supplies it carried in its various holds were indeed merely “humanitarian.” They are oblivious or indifferent, but mostly hostile, to the necessity of Israel needing to inspect those cargos for arms and military materiel being smuggled to the terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas does not so much govern Gaza’s 1.5 million people (aka “Palestinians”) as rules them with fear and an iron fist. It is repeated the world over that Israel “occupies” Gaza and is cruel and even “genocidal,” when in fact Hamas occupies Gaza and is cruel and has genocide in mind in its campaign to destroy Israel. The last thing Hamas would want to see is a happy, well-fed, healthy, and carefree Palestinian. It, Iran, and Hezbollah have a vested interest in the continued suffering and misery of the Palestinians, and in maintaining their collective identity as oppressed Palestinians. But, if the election results are to be accepted at face value, the Palestinians elected their abusers. So, no anguish should be wasted on these “stateless” hordes. Israel bungled its raid on the biggest vessel in the flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, sailing under the Turkish flag. From a helicopter it dropped commandos armed with only paintball guns and side arms (the paintball guns intended to mark troublemakers), only to have them brutally attacked by terrorists Israeli intelligence should have known would be on the vessel, given the organization’s proven ties to Hamas. This folly has been discussed more thoroughly elsewhere. Eleven “peace” activists died, including one Turkish-American. Many of these “activists” wrote their wills in expectation that they would die as Islamic martyrs when they “resisted” the Israeli boarding party. The Mavi Marmara was a setup, designed to entrap Israel. Note that terrorists usually prefer to be referred to as “resistance” fighters, when in truth they are the aggressors. Oft times they are called “freedom fighters”; we should take that term literally, because it is freedom they are fighting. Further, one must question the “humanitarian” compassion of the flotilla activists who were not terrorists. I have yet to hear of them organizing an underground railroad for Iranian dissenters. I don‘t recall them demonstrating in protest of the murder of Neda Soltani, the Iranian girl killed by a government sniper during the June demonstrations last year against the rigged reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Have they launched a raid on Cuban prisons to free political prisoners, or sent aid to Venezuelans suffering under Hugo Chavez’s impoverishing tyranny? No. But when the regimes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela employ force against their political opposition, either in the streets or in violent purges, the silence of these “humanitarians” is deafening. We never hear of them organizing a flotilla with the purpose of “embarrassing” a dictatorship and bringing world opprobrium to bear on it. These humanitarians are very selective of which tyrannies they oppose. If it’s a moderately free country, which Israel is, and especially if it is productive despite its socialism, then they’re against it. Never mind that its committed enemies wish to destroy it and initiate a second holocaust. Never mind the many Israelis murdered by Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and other “freedom fighters”; they were guilty by association and deserved to die. As for Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela -- well, these are cultural matters beyond judgment and it would be arrogant to meddle in those countries’ affairs. Why, it would be the height of moral hegemony! Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum on June 4th notes that the flotilla ruse was merely the latest instance of an attempt to emasculate Israel’s moral right to self-defense. Instead of launching planes, tanks, and ships at the Jewish state, they turned to other means – weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and (most recently) political delegitimization. Delegitimization turns the rules of war upside down: in particular strength is weakness and public opinion has supreme importance. Or, the “weakness” of the “non-violent,” “peaceful” flotilla is exploited to rally world opinion against Israel when its military stops the flotilla -- and walks into a public relations ambush (when it foolishly discounted the possibility of armed terrorists being on the Mavi Marmara). Charles Krauthammer, in his June 4th no-holds-barred column in The Washington Post, “Those Troublesome Jews,“ expands on the tactic of delegitimization and explains the special focus on Israel: Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, to be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza. Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas. Israel has already twice intercepted ships laden with Iranian arms destined for Hezbollah and Gaza. What country would allow that? Brigitte Gabriel also explains that the organization that oversaw the flotilla, the Turkish-based International Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), does not have humanitarian relief in mind so much as enfeebling and disarming Israel: IHH is an associate of Hamas and a member of the Union of the Good. This Union is headed by Yousef Al Qaradawi, one of the world’s most notorious Islamic terrorists (banned in England and America) and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. IHH was already involved in the purchasing of automatic weapons from other militant Islamic groups as far back as 1990 when their President Bulent Yildrim was focused on recruiting “Veteran soldiers in anticipation of the coming Holy war [jihad].” Simply put, IHH is a jihadist group cloaked in a humanitarian outfit. It has played important roles in terrorist operations such as the Millennium bomb plot and has been involved in weapons trafficking. Simply put, the IHH, like many such Islamic-controlled “charities,” is a stalking horse, concealing its true purpose, which is the destruction of Israel. In this instance, the stalking horse was a flotilla whose passengers were mostly vessels of indiscriminate, selfless compassion and exemplars of useful idiocy. Nevertheless, they are knowing abettors to the crime. Closer to home, another stalking horse is the federal government’s fabricated and wholly unwarranted angst over the “excesses” of freedom of speech -- the alleged ubiquity of “hate speech” in talk radio and cable TV, and the news reported on the Internet in competition with the “traditional” print media. It is an angst prodded by collectivist and leftist groups who wish to be protected from whatever truths might be revealed about them, who wish to establish government-imposed criteria of what constitutes “news” and the credentials of journalists, and to better indoctrinate the American public without any interference from whistle-blowers. As reported elsewhere, the advocates of “net neutrality,” government control of news reportage, and the regulation of information are creeping closer to their goals with little opposition from those who ought to be beating to quarters in defense of the First Amendment. Just as the IHH and other “humanitarian” outfits can count on the MSM to condemn Israel over the “vulnerability” and plight of the Palestinians, organizations in the U.S. can count on the MSM to turn a blind eye to their purposes of seeing the First Amendment gutted, abridged and rendered meaningless to protect the “vulnerable” and the “oppressed.” They are coming out of the woodwork, lured by the Obama administration’s lukewarm regard for the Constitution. What we have been witnessing for some years is a stealthy, incremental attempt to “delegitimize” the First Amendment and the freedom of speech by sending out the stalking horse of “hate speech.” It can be defined as any utterance that may “hurt” or “offend” certain groups, or potentially incite others to violence against those groups. But who will decide what is and is not “hate speech,” in what venue it may or may not be permitted, and how should the government be empowered to censor it? In absolute, unqualified accordance with the First Amendment, that Congress shall pass no law infringing on the freedom of speech or infringing on the freedom of the press, we have the example of White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who exercised her freedom of speech by making viciously bigoted comments about Jews on the occasion of the Gaza flotilla raid. She had every right to say what she said, but she has paid the price for her virulence. Public and official outrage (perhaps only embarrassment) compelled her to resign her place in the White House press corps and end her long career. No government agency compelled her to say what she said; no government agency censored her words, which certainly fell under the definition of “hate speech.” No government agency forced her to give up her career. No government agency forced a speakers bureau to drop her from its list. No government agency is warning the Hearst Corporation to fire her. If the government had had the power to censor her hate speech -- whether on the Internet or in the “traditional” press -- would we know the truth about Helen Thomas? No. If “hate speech” is protected by the First Amendment, the Helen Thomas episode has demonstrated one of the practical values of that Amendment: it allows individuals to reveal their philosophy, their morality, and their souls for all to see. One may agree with them, disagree with them, or ignore them. And the only individuals who might be “incited” to violence against Jews by Thomas‘s hate speech, have been subjecting Jews and Israel to violence for decades: the Islamic jihadists of all stripes and suasions. The Thomas episode, and the proper response to her words, could not have happened at a more crucial time. It may give the advocates of censorship reason to pause -- for the time being -- until a more amenable instance of hate speech rears its ugly head. The world was busy condemning Israel -- and, by implication, Jews -- for the horrendous act of defending its right to exist. And then Helen Thomas opened her mouth, and spooked the stalking horse away. The world had to condemn one or the other: Israel, or Helen Thomas’s bile. It couldn’t have it both ways -- at least, not for the moment. Cross-posted from Metablog

Welcome to the June 3rd, 2010 edition of the Objectivist Round-Up. This week presents insight and analyses written by authors who are animated by Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. According to Ayn Rand: My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. "About the Author," Atlas Shrugged, Appendix. So without any further delay (and in no particular order), here's this week's round-up: David Baucom presents The Surge of Atlas Shrugged posted at Cyrano Rises, saying, "My magazine article on the surge of Atlas Shrugged during the financial crisis, what its ideas expose about the crisis, its concept of moral selfishness, and its Americanism. Worth checking out for the cover." Rachel Miner presents Stuck! Get the Saw! posted at The Playful Spirit, saying, "A quick, funny story about not getting too drastic in one's parenting responses :)" Mike Zemack presents The Voucher Trojan Horse posted at Principled Perspectives, saying, "NJ Governor Chris Christie has called for the right of every child in the state to attend any school of his parents choosing, public or private. This is one of several moves that has the NJEA in a frenzy. He has some surprising support from the Left, including the NJ Star-Ledger, which recently branded the education establishment as “reactionary”. Unfortunately, he has chosen a dangerous vehicle for achieving “school choice” – state-funded vouchers." C.W. presents Robert Reich: Stop Subsidizing Wall Street posted at Krazy Economy, saying, "Robert Reich is a darling of the leftest wing of the Dems. Here, the good doctor shows us how twisted his thinking is on economics. Unfortunately, he is well published. This is the kind of stuff we have to expose." Diana Hsieh presents Curry Country Pork Ribs posted at NoodleFood, saying, "My improvised but yummy recipe for curry country pork ribs." Kelly Elmore presents Musing: Finding Romantic Prospects and Why It's Easy for Some and Not For Others posted at Reepicheep's Coracle, saying, "Some thoughts I had about Objectivists finding romance, sparked by Diana's offer to make a podcast about that." Jason Stotts presents Formspring Question: Changing Sexual Orientation posted at Erosophia, saying, "Can someone change their sexual orientation? Find out in my post." Ari Armstrong presents By Endorsing Horrific 'Personhood' Measure, Republicans Court Defeat posted at Free Colorado, saying, "Amendment 62, a slightly redrafted version of 2008's Amendment 48, would, if passed and fully enforced, ban all abortions, even in cases of risks to the woman's health, rape, incest, and fetal deformity." Paul Hsieh presents How To Truly Honor Our Soldiers posted at NoodleFood, saying, "My post-Memorial Day musings following a meeting with an Objectivist US Army officer." Paul Hsieh presents Hsieh PJM Oped: Beware Dr. Galbraith's Snake Oil posted at We Stand FIRM, saying, "My latest OpEd discusses why some economists insist that governments can create something from nothing." Michael Labeit presents Japanese Govenerment to Exempt Foreign Investors from the Corporate Bond Tax posted at Michael Labeit at EconomicPolicyJournal.com. Beth Haynes presents New Lows in Newspeak posted at Black Ribbon Project, saying, "With an astounding use of double-speak, the DOJ takes steps toward making it a criminal matter for practicing physicians to refuse to accept government price-fixing." Rational Jenn presents Kids and Money Update posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "Our kids are getting some good experience with money lately--AND with contract negotiations!" Jenn Casey and Kelly Elmore present Podcast #5: Free Range Parenting posted at Jenn Casey and Kelly Elmore, saying, "Our latest podcast focuses on the "Free Range Kids" movement started by Lenore Skenazy last year." Rational Jenn presents MiniCon Registration is Live! posted at Rational Jenn, saying, "If you aren't attending OCON this year, consider joining us in Atlanta! Our registration form is now live on our website. MiniCon is part-social, part-thoughtful, ALL-AWESOME. )" David C Lewis, RFA presents Behaviorism In Financial Planning posted at A Revolution In Financial Planning. Stella presents "The Pill kills" posted at ReasonPharm, saying, "An asinine "pro-life" argument is just as bad as the real, transparently obvious agenda beneath it." That concludes this edition of the round-up. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Objectivist round-up using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. Cross-posted from Metablog

The title is intriguing, tempting, and ostensibly relevant in today‘s culture: The Treason of the Clerks (La Trahison des clercs), by 20th century French novelist and critic, Julien Benda. By clerks, Benda meant Medieval scribes, a small class of men who could read and write and understand what others read and wrote. The vast majority of men in that period, including many in the various ruling aristocracies, were illiterate. Roger Kimball, in his New Criterion 1992 article on the relevance of modern intellectuals’ treason, noted: Benda tells us that he uses the term “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are in this sense clercs. That is, anyone who occupies a place in what novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand called the “transmission belt” of ideas, philosophical, political, scientific, technological, and esthetic. The subject of Benda’s critique was the general abandonment in his time by intellectuals of their ideals to take part in what he called the “passions” of the day, that is, to trade their pursuit of the ethereal for the “realism” of the masses. He dwells on class passions and national passions but neglects to define any of his terms. This neglect was portaged into translations of the work. Ages ago I read about half of the Richard Aldington translation of Treason cited by Kimball, and gave up because I could no longer struggle with the absence of definitions of Benda’s key terms. What ideals or ideas was he referring to? No substantive answer was given. One important term he does not define, either, but discusses for pages, is realism. I could only take it to mean a French sense of the “practical” or “pragmatic.” He did not approve of it. As I construed Benda’s complaint, it was that modern intellectuals sanctioned the rise of especially emotional or populist politics and the demotion or discarding of reason and Enlightenment values in pursuit of those politics. But I got lost in the fog of his polemics, and could only conclude that, notwithstanding the absence of definitions, Benda was on to something important. I imagined him standing outside the forest of trees, warning that he heard menacing growls from deep inside, but could not identify its source. Kimball wrote of Treason in 1992: The Treason of the Intellectuals is an energetic hodgepodge of a book. The philosopher Jean-François Revel recently described it as “one of the fussiest pleas on behalf of the necessary independence of intellectuals.” Certainly it is rich, quirky, erudite, digressive, and polemical: more an exclamation than an analysis. Partisan in its claims for disinterestedness, it is ruthless in its defense of intellectual high-mindedness. Yet given the horrific events that unfolded in the decades following its publication, Benda’s unremitting attack on the politicization of the intellect and ethnic separatism cannot but strike us as prescient. And given the continuing echo in our own time of the problems he anatomized, the relevance of his observations to our situation can hardly be doubted. From the savage flowering of ethnic hatreds in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to the mendacious demands for political correctness and multiculturalism on college campuses across America and Europe, the treason of the intellectuals continues to play out its unedifying drama. Benda spoke of “a cataclysm in the moral notions of those who educate the world.” That cataclysm is erupting in every corner of cultural life today. I’m happy that Kimball (not one of my favorite cultural observers; his choice of the term pontificators is indicative of his contempt for champions of reason) was able to wrest some meaning from Benda’s work. I found the task of reading it a laborious intellectual chore from which I derived little intellectual reward and only a smidgeon of insight into a larger issue. The harder I dug my mental knife into the work, the duller the blade became. Compared to Treason, tackling Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was a snap. There are a few paragraphs in Benda’s work which at least have the sparkle of zircon. To wit, when he discusses the Enlightenment versus the Dark Ages: I shall go further and say that even if an examination of the past could lead to any valid prediction concerning man's future, that prediction would be the contrary of reassuring. People forget that Hellenic rationalism only really enlightened the world during seven hundred years, that is was then hidden (this a minima verdict will be granted me) for twelve centuries, and has begun to shine again for barely four centuries; so that the longest period of consecutive time in human history on which we can found inductions is, upon the whole, a period of intellectual and moral darkness. Looking at history, we may say in a more synthetic manner that, with the exception of two or three very short, luminous epochs whose light, like that of certain stars, lightens the world long after they are extinct, humanity lives generally in darkness; while literatures live generally in a state of decadence and the organism in disorder. And the disturbing thing is that humanity does not seem to mind these long periods of cave-dwelling. Academia abounds with the kind of treasonous intellectuals described by Kimball and Benda. So does the field of journalism, or what is thought to be journalism, if The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the mainstream media are taken as measures of pristine journalism. Obama’s cabinet and departmental picks are totalitarians of one stripe or another, immune from close scrutiny and criticism by most pundits and columnists. To criticize Anita Dunn, or Elena Kagan, or Eric Holder, or Cass Sunstein, or Obama himself, or any of their political purposes, is to criticize oneself. Phyllis Chesler, some years ago in a Front Page article, remarked on such columnists and treason, alluding to these “clerks“ and the treason they commit when they side with the jihadists and Islamists in the name of relativism and multiculturalism: : We have a serious fifth column in our midst, one that has made common cause with Islamists against us, one that has been well funded by Arab oil billionaires for more than forty years. Now, George Soros too, a fifth column General who, for a variety of reasons, has actually been leading the cultural war against the West. They are fools—but they are dangerous fools. Do they think they will be spared because they are so politically correct? Do they think that they would enjoy the same freedom of speech in Mecca or Tehran that they enjoy in the West? “Humanity” is not the subject here, but rather the infinitesimal but headline-grabbing portion of it that not only does not seem to mind advocating dwelling in caves, but that emerges from them to make absurd statements and announce baffling alliances, through the borrowed mega-bullhorns of the MSM, and to persuade Americans to defer to the wishes of an all-wise führer or an angry Muslim cleric. Some are foolish pundits, others are illiterate troglodytes. They make a curious company of clerks, ready for the guillotine or firing squad once the totalitarians decide they are no longer needed to sell the country into slavery. They are not the academics and intellectuals who write books that promote irrationalism; they are at the far end of the transmission belt. After all, who today remembers John Rawls and his A Theory of Justice? Or John Dewey and his Democracy and Education? Thomas Friedman, in his now notorious September 2009 New York Times column, “Our One-Party Democracy,” complained about the “inefficiencies” of a Congress dominated by Democrats -- or what he called a one-party autocracy -- in getting Obama’s socialist agenda legislated. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. Yes, it certainly has its drawbacks, especially when it obliterates individual rights, which apparently Friedman is opposed to. Or perhaps he wouldn’t miss them because he doesn’t know what they are. It is the first time I have heard of a communist/fascist elite, with the power of life and death over millions, called a “reasonably enlightened group of people.” Friedman believes in socialized health care and cap-and-trade law. So do President Obama and most of Congress. Ergo, Obama should be able to just “impose” his agenda on the country and have it rubber-stamped by the one-party autocracy. There is Molly Norris, whose dainty sally in freedom of speech, in response to Comedy Central’s capitulation to Islamic threats against the TV show for daring to suggest that it was Mohammed in a bear costume, consisted of innocuous, doodle-like drawings of everyday utilitarian objects she whimsically called Mohammed. However, it launched “a thousand ships and burned to topless towers of Ilium” (to quote Cyrano de Bergerac) by inspiring “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” in defiance of the bottomless, offended sensitivities of Muslims, especially on Facebook. Hundreds of people drew Mohammed, and gave Muslims nearly limitless choices to concretize their conception of the prophet. But they prefer not to be able to visualize him; given the creed he is credited with creating, I don’t blame them. Instead, they demonstrated against the “blasphemy” and drew from their stockpile of burnable American, British and Danish flags to parade noisily in the streets. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia banned Facebook, and then YouTube. It was “To hell with freedom of speech” and “Kill those who insult Mohammed” all over again. Norris now regrets having taken her First Amendment right seriously. Ms Norris says that she had nothing to do with the page even though her name was posted on it. Some media reports implied that she had set up the Facebook campaign. "I never started a Facebook page; I never set up any place for people to send drawings to and I never received any drawings," she said on her blog. She apologized for her role in the controversy and said that the content of the page was "offensive to Muslims who did nothing to endanger our right to expression in the first place". Not exactly a profile in courage. Dhimmitude becomes no one, it neither flatters nor protects anyone from a fatwa. European cartoonists have shown more courage than most American cartoonists; they’re closer to the threat than Americans and must live in hiding lest they share the fate of Theo van Gogh. It has been, after all, European cartoons, and not American, that caused the riots, deaths and destruction. There is President Obama himself, occasional professor of selective semantics (ObamaSpeak?) who ordered the excision of all references to Islam, Muslims, and jihad from future official security documents on terrorism, lest Muslims be offended by the fact that the overwhelming number of terrorist attacks are committed by…Muslims. Terrorists just drop out of the sky, or causelessly pop into existence like the Borg in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” causing regrettable death and destruction but with no insidious agenda to assimilate survivors of their mayhem. No need to implicate a religion or its core tenets, is there? It’s only coincidence, isn’t it? Osman Mirghani , the deputy editor-in-chief of 'Al-Sharq Al-Awsat,' which is owned by a Saudi Arabian company and published in London, wrote an op-ed last week under the headline "Why Didn't Obama Mention Islam?." The Obama administration has broken from the Bush government’s policy of using the term “Islamic terrorism” in official documents and "no longer [is] responding to extremist voices" that call for targeting home countries of terrorists, he explained. He said the president is carrying out his pledge in his “reaching out to Muslims speech” at Cairo University in June 2008. Regarding Obama's statements on the botched Times Square bombing, the editor praised President Obama for not once referring to prime suspect Faisal Shahzad’s being Muslim and for not “mentioning Islam in discussing the terrorist operation." Obama has inaugurated a kind of Orwellian thought crime. But neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder nor Homeland Director Janet Napolitano is likely suffer the fate of Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Smith is “re-educated” by his torturer, O’Brien, to believe that words can mean anything or even be excised from language to effect the non-existence of the entities they identify; having been converted, he is scheduled for eventual execution. They refuse to utter, or are unable without becoming tongue-twisted, to utter “Islamic terrorism” or “radical Islam”; so, for the moment, they are safe from the ungentle ministrations of their Islamic interrogators. Director Woody Allen demonstrated his non-appreciation of the freedom he has enjoyed to make neurosis-themed movies in America. During an interview at the Cannes Film Festival, he endorsed Thomas Friedman’s conception of bully politics, that dissenters should just excuse themselves and allow Obama to do what he thinks best by decree. In an interview published by Spanish language newspaper La Vanguardia (that we translated), Allen says “I am pleased with Obama. I think he’s brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.” The director said "it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly." What fearlessness. What nebbish vacuity. Chris Matthews of MSNBC’s “Hardball” may yet inspire a new reality TV program, “Losing It.” If this country ever has a Minister of Propaganda with power over the press and the Internet, un-charismatic Cass Sunstein may be that man, but Matthews would be his riled-up, psychotic public mouthpiece. Like Friedman and Allen, he loves Obama, but is worried that he isn’t doing enough. "The President scares me," Matthews said of Obama's response to the Gulf oil spill disaster. "He's been acting a little like a Vatican Observer here. When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn't want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, 'I'm in charge,' he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It's in our interest." Matthews described the oil spill as "the scariest thing I've ever seen…" It hasn’t occurred to Matthews that perhaps Obama isn’t interested in taking ownership of a mere oil spill. He has bigger ambitions of ownership, such as the whole economy. But, Matthews, too, agrees with Friedman and Allen that Obama should be allowed to just get things done, and to punish anyone who stands in his way or doesn’t live up to the state’s measure of social responsibility. On his program last week, he had a revealing exchange with his guests. Apparently former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn isn’t the only Obama admirer with an affinity for Maoist methodology. On Hardball Monday night, Chris Matthews began a week long rant about the BP oil spill that had him calling for the imprisonment of the whole BP board, possibly their execution, and for the President to nationalize the oil industry. MATTHEWS: Yes. In China, it‘s a more brutal society—a more brutal society, Kate, but they execute people for this, major industrial leaders that commit crimes like this, failure like this… Why doesn‘t the president go in there and nationalize that industry and get the job done for the people? Environmental activist writers Abrahm Lustgarten of Propublica and Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones were left gasping for air as Matthews vociferously displayed an appalling ignorance of anything having to do with reality. Ignorance and reality have never stopped the advocates and practitioners of “enlightened” brutality from taking “necessary actions“ to do “good“ at the point of a gun. Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, bin Laden, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad all had or have their useful idiots, too. Finally, Sonny Bunch in The Washington Times reports that director Steven Soderbergh is also fearless of the reality he has muted, if not erased, in his “biopic,” Che, which glorifies the life of Cuban Communist revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who murdered countless Cubans and spread the revolution in Latin America. When asked in Toronto to comment on Guevara’s role in creating forced labor camps and punishing anyone perceived to be a threat to Fidel Castro’s regime, Soderbergh demurred. "I don't know that there's any place for a person like me in the society that he was trying to make," the director said. "I'm the poster child for a lot of the [stuff] that he was trying to eradicate." Come the “revolution,” he can count on eradication. He knows too much. His star, Benicio del Toro, who plays Guevara, walked out on an interview when asked questions that threw doubt on Guevara’s sainthood. In another interview, he played the relativist-multiculturalist card: Once the film was completed, distributed and shown to critics, Benicio had to deal with allegations of sugar-coating Che’s legacy: “He believed in the death penalty, no doubt. But I remember Che being included in a TV show that showed pictures of terrorists. I was like, ‘Why isn’t Nixon there for the Vietnam War?’ You’d have to put a lot of pictures of other people before you’d put Che’s. [...] We tell stories about Batman, and he was a type of Batman. No one can deny that he was trying to stop man exploiting man, whether he was successful or not.” I‘ll deny it. I‘ll say that his policy was to exploit his victims until they were dead. “He believed in the death penalty.” What an understatement of ignorance! Or was it evasion? Del Toro claims he “researched” Guevara’s life and read his writings. His sight must have glazed over those sections in which the revolutionary promoted hatred and sanctioned killing. Tyranny, to many, is a coquettish tease, alluring because those who flirt with it lack any sense of personal self-worth. The “good” to them, altruistic in nature, is any policy that would rob their betters of their pride and independence, and bring them down to the level of being dependents on “enlightened” authority. But there is a limit to such moral depravity. The individuals discussed above have reached that limit. The next stage beyond a confession of it is a further descent into lunacy. That is the ultimate price exacted for flirting with tyranny, and claiming that one could not live without it. Cross-posted from Metablog

With some minor editing, I sent this letter to Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist for the Washington Post and other newspapers, in response to an article severely critical of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. In it, he points out that Obama’s “make nice” policy and obsequious deference to statist regimes are backfiring. Among other things, Krauthammer questions the friendship of Brazil and Turkey concerning the deal their leaders made with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to supply Iran with enriched uranium. Prominently displayed with the article is a photograph of Ahmadinejad holding up the hands of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With barely contained contempt, Krauthammer excoriates the “wisdom” of Obama’s foreign policy, which could be said to be compatible with the “wisdom” of his domestic policy. He rightly observes that Obama’s consistent policy of kowtowing to feudal kings, dictators, and authoritarians of various stripes and “joshing” with political thugs (Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico), and of alienating, offending, snubbing, and betraying his allies (Britain, Israel, Colombia), is destined to set up the U.S. for more such flagrant towel-snapping by his alleged admirers and friends among the statists and strongmen. It is the established rule of bullies to “befriend” the weak and the cowardly, and then humiliate them at every opportunity with expressions of disdain. The behavior can be observed in schoolyards, Congress, and cellblocks. There is lexicon of prison slang for such a weak person, which I will spare the reader of here. But that same criminal evaluation of Obama is evident in the actions of Obama’s compadres in power. Krauthammer seems unable or reluctant to pass a moral judgment on Obama. He has assembled all the damning evidence, and clearly identified the consequences of Obama’s policies. One can, for a moment, distinguish between Obama’s actions and his character. However, to grasp the nature of what are ostensibly foolish and naïve actions and which defy all logic and reason. Krauthammer is unable to, or refuses to, link the two observable phenomena. If one wishes to grasp the nature of evil, it is necessary to examine the character of its author. Krauthammer neglects to examine the character of Barack Obama. If he did examine that character, he would conclude that Obama is as much this country’s enemy as Iran, Putin’s Russia, Islamic states, and any other regime that would like to see America bloodied and beaten to its knees in submission. Charles Krauthammer The Washington Post Dear Mr. Krauthammer: I left a comment that your May 21 column Washington Post article, “The fruits of weakness,” could be summed up as, “How’s that Neville Chamberlain policy working for you, Mr. Obama?” You narrated President Obama’s policy of appeasement of our enemies and betrayal of our allies and friends with frankness, exactitude, and obvious controlled outrage. The president’s record to date in his foreign policy reads like a police charge sheet or grand jury indictment of a criminal. Indeed, you wrote that: This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat -- accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum. Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It's the perfect fulfillment of Obama's adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. I emphasized “by design and, indeed, on principle.” In my mind, and in violent abuse of my commitment to freedom and American liberty, not to mention its good name, Obama’s policies and actions in the foreign policy realm constitute a deliberate, conscious policy of defeating America for her enemies, because her enemies cannot defeat her individually or collectively. This is indeed by “design and on principle.” The logical conclusion is that he has embarked on a policy of destroying this country, of seeing it in ruins. His domestic policy, vis-à-vis that end, is obvious. His every word and action as president is calculated to achieve that end, and include his legislative agenda, his cabinet and regulatory appointees, and his choices for the Supreme Court. Yet, you write as though Obama were as naïve and foolish as Neville Chamberlain. For all the British prime minister’s weaknesses and flaws, a suicidal pacifism so evident and predictable in his compromising “approach” to Adolf Hitler, Chamberlain actually thought he was saving Britain and Europe from a disastrous war. But he did not also make speeches in Parliament that denigrated his own country, that attacked and mocked the liberties of its citizens, and allow dictators and despots to address Parliament on their own terms. In the latter instance, I am referring to Obama’s alliance with President of Mexico Calderon, who attacked an American state, Arizona, and implicitly called for an end to the sovereignty of the United States, to the applause of the Democratic majority in Congress, an applause that was not mere courtesy shown the chief executive of another country. It was an applause of agreement that comported with Obama's own anti-American stance. You are a step away from concluding that Obama is a wannabe tyrant who means his own country no good. Something, perhaps the syntax of the accusation, or the sound of it echoing in the chamber of moral judgment, is preventing you from calling him treasonous and evil. You seem to be reluctant to make that final and damning judgment. But, power-lusters in the past as a rule preached the “greatness” of their countries and how that status could be achieved or restored. Can you name me one dictator or emperor from the past who deliberately set out to nettle and deprecate his own country? Obama’s actions are unprecedented in the history of American politics, or in any nation’s politics. Obama is the vengeance dream of every anti-American “radical” who ever demonstrated against this country over the last half century, a dream come to life as the nightmare it must be. Examine more closely the root motive of his policies, actions, designs, and principles. Obama is neither naïve nor foolish or misguided. His means and ends are conscious, deliberate, and calculated to destroy. He has built a super car bomb in his fiscal policies and his foreign policy, with every hope of seeing them explode with the maximum collateral damage. He is a home-grown terrorist in slow-motion. Obama is perilously and vastly worse than Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, or Bill Clinton. It requires honesty and moral integrity, based on the mounting evidence open to all, to reach that conclusion. Cross-posted from Metablog

What is the problem that so many liberal/left MSM pundits and columnists have with identifying the moral, political, and judicial philosophy of President Barack Obama’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Elena Kagan? Fox Nation reports that: In a 1996 paper [in the University of Chicago Law Review] "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine," Kagan argued it may be proper to suppress speech because it is offensive to society or to the government. That paper asserted First Amendment doctrine is comprised of "motives and … actions infested with them" and she goes so far as to claim that "First Amendment law is best understood and most readily explained as a kind of motive-hunting." Kagan's name was also on a brief, United States V. Stevens, dug up by the Washington Examiner, stating: "Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs." In short, the government may elect to censor or not to censor, depending on a juggling act between the “value” of speech and its potential “societal costs,” performed by a government official whose decision is completely arbitrary and governed by his “motives,” which a court may or may not decide are “appropriate.” And from where does the government derive its “balancing” powers? Not the Constitution. Who knows? Kagan may actually respect the First Amendment. In which case, she would gladly approve of the executive branch abridging it by decree, but not Congress. It is a measure of the recidivist character of the mainstream media that it absolutely refuses to identify the political suasion of Kagan, except to vociferously deny that suasion when it is identified outside the MSM. Instead, the left/liberal pundits and columnists dwell on her feistiness, her devotion to her career, her allegedly indeterminate political leanings, and so forth, in a campaign of ambiguity and puffery. Her suasion is their suasion. Don’t expect the Democrats or their allies in the MSM to ever admit they comprise a collective Freddy Krueger. In the heavily made-up and lavishly garbed image reflected in their mirror, they see Jane Addams. The MSM chooses to not reach the conclusion because a socialist selected Kagan. She is in line to sit permanently on the Court where she can help mete unconscionable damage to the republic and the freedom of its citizens. They refuse to entertain the question: Why would Obama choose anyone else but a fellow advocate of “hope and change”? The MSM does not accept the designation of Obama and his administration as socialist; they agree with Obama that the term is “vile” and “demonizing.” Ergo, it can’t be true, and anyone who says otherwise is guilty of character assassination. It would be impractical to discuss all of Kagan’s positions and utterances here without endeavoring to write a book. The New York Times, bless its liberal/left heart, however, has provided a handy reference guide to Kagan’s positions and views, a guide that substantiates any and all charges against the Court nominee that she would be a leftist judicial activist on the bench. Kagan’s record shouldn’t deceive or confuse anyone. After all, Lenin was also a pragmatist. He and his fellow communists proclaimed the “New Economic Policy” that was intended to rescue the Russian economy from communist depredations. As soon as that relaxation of controls put two or three crumbs of bread on Russian dinner plates instead of one, down came the controls again. It is easy to identify Kagan’s political suasion because all of her positions are, if not overtly socialist, then pragmatically statist. She is for disarming Americans, she is for “selective” censorship, and she worked with the Clinton administration on the first round of attempted socialized medicine, she probably helped to craft the “master agreement” that put the tobacco companies under a special federal thumb. She is no friend of freedom. The first step is to accept the premise that Obama would not have nominated anyone who advocated freedom of speech, individual rights, the sanctity of property, and limited government. That’s a given. He would nominate someone amenable to his statist agenda and at the same time present that person as “not radical.” She is a rationalizing pragmatist who also advocates the expansion of executive powers. Reading her papers on cases and issues (especially the one on government “motivation“), one can’t immediately determine what her philosophy of law is, or where she stands on individual rights or on the Constitution. It’s much like trying to zero in on a target when it keeps moving in concentric circles. But there are key statements in her academic papers, and which she made throughout her career, that can simplify the task. That task is necessary, even though it means reading large chunks of her academic and career statements. By way of exhibiting her pretzel-like thinking and expository style, try digesting this chunk from her Law Review article, "Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine.” In a seemingly endless screed on whether or not government may censor out of perceived or potential causes of “harm” or if it seeks to “advantage” or “disadvantage” the subjects or expressers of speech, she writes: The narrower (speech-related) principle inheres in the broader; both are aspects, so the argument goes, of the appropriate relationship between the government and individuals within a liberal society. The second kind of nonconsequentialist account for the prohibition of ideological motive relates more exclusively to expression, emphasizing the place of such activity in a democracy. On this view, the prohibition of ideological motive, and its concomitant principle of equality, lies at the core of the First Amendment because it lies at the core of democratic self-government. The democratic project is one of constant collective self-determination; expressive activity is the vehicle through which a sovereign citizenry engages in this process by mediating diverse views on the appropriate nature of the community. Were the government to limit speech based on its sense of which ideas have merit, it would expropriate an authority not intended for it and negate a critical aspect of self-government. Democracy demands that sovereign citizens, through each generation, retain authority to evaluate competing visions and their adherents-to decide which ideas and officials merit approval. Hence democracy bars the government from restricting speech (as it also bars the government from limiting the franchise) on the ground that such activity will challenge reigning beliefs or incumbent officials. The government must treat all ideas as contingent, because subject to never-ending popular scrutiny. On this view, the prohibition of certain motives again serves as a way to delineate the proper sphere of authority, hereby preventing a democratic state from contravening key principles of self-government and thereby undermining its foundation. This is as bad as reading Stanley Fish, a professor of law at Florida International University, excoriate the First Amendment with his verbal embroidery, or Laurence Tribe, a confessed plagiarist and professor of law at Harvard, pronounce on the fluxing value of freedom of speech. One of Tribe’s “best” students happened to be Barack Obama. Leftists Tribe and Cass Sunstein, who now heads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, not only vetted her Law Review article, but are cited numerous times by Kagan throughout as authorities on constitutional interpretation. Readers may have read of deconstructionism in literature, in which “texts” are explored for their “tensions” and “contradictions,” apart from their literal meaning. The patron saint of this school of literary analysis is Jacques Derrida. Kagan’s paper is an example of deconstructionism in law. Its patron saint is Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of “shouting fire in a theater” fame. What difference is there between a Holmesian “clear and present” danger in someone’s exercise of freedom of a speech that may lead to a “harm” forbidden by Congress, and the “value of a speech” as opposed to its “societal costs”? Kagan cites Holmes occasionally in her paper, in an appearance of amused dissension. But note 257 of her paper is in tandem with Holmes’ thinking: As I explain, the distinction between motive-based analysis and effects-based analysis remains all-important for purposes of constructing (and explaining) First Amendment doctrine. Holmes himself was a judicial “that was then, this is now” pragmatist who was against a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Holmes declared that the law should develop along with society and that the 14th Amendment did not deny states a right to experiment with social legislation. He also argued for judicial restraint, asserting that the Court should not interpret the Constitution according to its own social philosophy. As long ago as 1881, Holmes wrote in The Common Law: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, and even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.” Fundamental ideas are out, no longer relevant to the “necessities of the time” or the “prevalent moral and political theories.” Kagan certainly possesses, together with her “gang,” an intuition of public policy, which is unbridled statism. Kagan is an advocate of “racial and gender” equality (of the legislative kind), and writes that she would be elated if speech that allegedly perpetuated their inequality “disappeared.” Kagan is in solid with Obama, with the Democrats, and with the “extreme“ left-wing of the Democrats. She taught law at the University of Chicago with Barack Obama, and has been his long-time collaborator and political supporter. Her donations to Obama and his party are public record. It is reported that between 2000 and 2008, Kagan contributed $12,550 to Democrats, more than half of it going to Obama's various campaigns. She contributed to Rahm Emanuel’s run for the Senate. The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, found (as I was not able to) a copy of Kagan’s senior year Princeton University thesis, "To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933," in which she laments the ineptitude of the Socialist Party in New York politics. An excerpt goes: "In our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories than of socialism's greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular, did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?" She concludes: The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope." Michael Goldfarb, author of the article, remarks: Obviously, one imagines that Kagan's views have evolved significantly over the last three decades, but given Obama's stated aversion to radicalism, it's certainly worth noting the radical roots of the nation's top lawyer. Obviously, her views have not so much “evolved significantly” as expanded to encompass the whole Alinskyite/Obama policy of “hope” for “change.” They certainly have not mellowed and become less strident. The “socialist radicals” have moved from New York City to Washington. Kagan’s “roots” have only grown deeper, and are part of a vast interlocking root system that includes those of Bill Ayers, David Axelrod, Cass Sunstein….and Barack Obama. Cross-posted from Metablog

In my May 7th commentary, “’Civility’ per Obama,” I noted that: One can’t question someone’s views or positions without delving into his motives and patriotism. (e.g., “Sir, if you know the idea is patently fraudulent, stupid, and costly, why are you for it?”) (Emphasis mine) I would like to briefly expand on that comment, for it is important to understand the motivation of those responsible for what can only become a catastrophe for this country. It is important for Americans to grasp it, whether they are for or against ObamaCare or any other law this administration in particular authors and imposes on the country. It is crucial that men understand what moves those who advocate the blatantly demonstrable irrational. If more Americans understood it, perhaps the allure of state-managed existence in any realm would diminish and vanish, and its advocates and supporters be exposed for the monsters they are. I characterized the words, actions, and attitude of President Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and others in Washington, concerning their desire to have ObamaCare and other statist legislation passed and enacted as law, in resolute disregard for individual rights, Constitutional limitations on executive and Congressional power, and of the proven opposition to their ends, as scabrous arrogance. It is why they are “for it” in the face of all the evidence, available to anyone, that their legislation can only lead to destruction, misery, and impoverishment. The key to such legislation is the role of compulsion, or force. The arrogance is rooted in the power to compel one to act against one’s values, against one’s own life. The monsters wish to truly GOVERN people, not let them alone. In the past I have criticized the sloppy and dangerous usage of the terms govern and democracy, and will not repeat myself here. But, free men have no need of the monsters. Men who agree that they should be “governed” or “ruled” by them are of no interest to them, either. Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand wrote in her 1941 pamphlet, “To All Innocent Fifth Columnists“ The Totalitarians do not want your active support. They do not need it. They have their small, compact, well-organized minority, and it is sufficient to carry out their aims. All they want from you is your indifference. And one’s indifference can complement the indifference of the legislators. Such indifference, as Rand explains, is a silent sanction of their actions and policies. But free, independent men are truly hated by our "leaders," who are power-lusters first class. "Governing" otherwise free men -- making them think and act in ways free men might not otherwise think or act -- is their chief and principal end. If the element of compulsion or force were not woven into their laws, they would have no interest in such legislation -- they would have no reason to act, no reason to seek office, no reason to persuade their future serfs and slaves that it is in their best interests to become serfs and slaves. Ellsworth Toohey, in The Fountainhead, in answer to Peter Keating’s question of why Toohey wanted to kill the hero, Howard Roark, answered: “I don’t want to kill him. I want him in jail. You understand? In jail. In a cell. Behind bars. Locked, stopped, strapped -- and alive. He’ll get up when they tell him to. He’ll eat what they give him. He’ll move when he’s told to move, and stop when he’s told. He’ll walk to the jute mill, when he’s told, and he’ll work as he’s told. They’ll push him, if he doesn’t move fast enough, and they’ll slap his face when they feel like it, and they’ll beat him with rubber hose if he doesn’t obey. And he’ll obey. He’ll take orders. He’ll take orders!”* That is the fundamental, base, evil motivation of those who wish to employ force, dramatized and expressed by Toohey, who relishes the prospect of seeing Roark -- or anyone like him -- in fetters and not free to live his own life. You will take orders. You will be locked, stopped, and strapped, and you’ll do as you’re told if you wish to stay alive, whether you are a complacent altruist or intransigent individualist. You will obey, else you will go to jail -- or live in a country that has been transformed into a jail; that is the true meaning of Obama’s slogan, “hope and change,” all of his “audacious” policies and appointments and laws are geared to that aim -- or see your bank accounts cleaned out by the government, or your house seized by it, or your wages garnisheed at the whim of an anonymous bureaucrat. You will help Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al. make their “ideal” society work, even though they know, but do not tell you, that jails and prisons of whatever size -- whether it is a county jail or a federal prison or a whole country -- are not independent, self-sustaining organizations, which must collapse because production is not their purpose. Witness the campaign of conquest of the Nazis when they became fully-empowered totalitarians. Their purpose is to contain and control -- and to exact obedience from its inmates, regardless of their willingness or recalcitrance, regardless of their economic status or profession, regardless of the expected consequences, which is destruction. For a dramatization of those consequences, see Rand‘s Atlas Shrugged. That is the long and short of the motivation behind those who would “govern” Americans. It is as important an issue to understand as the fallacy and evil underlying any collectivist system. That motivation is intimately and inexorably linked to the idea of force. *Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943). New York: Penguin/Plume Centennial Edition, 2005, p. 663. Cross-posted from Metablog

Some would say it hardly matters at which school President Barack Obama gave his commencement address on May 1st. I agree. Most if not all American universities are top-heavy with every variety of left-wing and collectivist faculty, concentrated in the humanities and dedicated to lobotomizing their students and weeding out the recalcitrant. But while institutions like Harvard are noisily left, other major schools, like the University of Michigan, where Obama spoke, are quietly so. State universities turn out a higher proportion of indoctrinated serfs, obeisant automatons, and committed gauleiters than does Harvard, Yale or Princeton. Was his speech “over-the-top”? Or an instance of underhanded dissimulation? Or evidence of plain ignorance? What did he mean by “civility,” which he mentioned three times? His speech has been analyzed in several columns. Luria Doan scores him on a dozen instances of hypocrisy and double-talk in “Obama Jumps the Shark In Michigan,” while Frederick Cosby also reports on Obama’s interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today.” Speaking openly about the Tea Party for the first time, he generously conceded that many of its participants are “legitimately concerned about the deficit,” but was dismissive of others. So, there’s that segment of it (Tea Party movement) which I think is just dug in ideologically, and that strain has existed in American politics for a long time. Since the American Revolution? Perhaps he wouldn’t have approved of the uncompromising “tone” of the original patriots. But apparently there’s nothing wrong with this socialist/pragmatist being “ideologically dug-in,” dedicated to “changing” America into a servile, European style nation. His remarks on “civility” at Michigan were a sly overture to censorship, a trial balloon to see how his audience received it. The audience, with which he enjoyed a disturbing bonhomie, applauded and cheered his words without grasping what they were applauding and cheering. Now, the second way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate. (Applause.) These arguments we’re having over government and health care and war and taxes -- these are serious arguments. They should arouse people’s passions, and it’s important for everybody to join in the debate, with all the vigor that the maintenance of a free people requires. But we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down. (Applause.) You can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it. You can question somebody’s views and their judgment without questioning their motives or their patriotism. (Applause.) Throwing around phrases like “socialists” and “Soviet-style takeover” and “fascist” and “right-wing nut” -- (laughter) -- that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes. “Civility,” noted Obama, requires that opposing parties treat each other with “courtesy and respect.” Why? He gave no reasons. Note that he was brave enough to pronounce the terms “fascists,” “socialists,” and “Soviet-style takeover” -- things he and Congress have been accused of being and doing -- intending to obliterate their significance by pronouncing them and angling for the audience’s response -- laughter -- to help him wipe out that significance. The audience obliged. All during the period leading up to the passage of ObamaCare, people’s passions were aroused. They were ignored. Everybody tried to join the “debate.” They were shut out in the name of “transparency.” Demonization is not a synonym for the accurate identification of ideas and motivations, which is what the Tea Parties have attempted to communicate over the noise of a hostile and demonizing press and the denigrating statements of Democratic politicians. One can’t question someone’s views or positions without delving into his motives and patriotism. (E.g., “Sir, if you know the idea is patently fraudulent, stupid, and costly, why are you for it?”) Note that three of the four instances of “demonization” are correct identifications of Obama’s demonstrable agenda; certainly not examples of Democratic name-calling. The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning –- since, after all, why should we listen to a “fascist,” or a “socialist,” or a “right-wing nut,” or a left-wing nut”? (Laughter.) The door was closed to compromise, except to anyone willing to compromise his principles to pass a bill that nationalized one-sixth of the American economy and declared that the lives and wealth of Americans are now federal property, to be managed and disposed of at a bureaucrat’s whim. “Democratic deliberation” is merely the triumph of the gang with the loudest mob and best press; the Founders knew that when they established a republic. And, we have been assaulted with the exhortations of fascists and socialists in and out of government for two years now. Note, also, how Obama lumps together “right-wing nuts” and “left-wing nuts,” as though no one could or should discern the difference between someone arguing for limited government and someone advocating unlimited government. This is vilification by equivocation. He made one salient observation in the course of his address, and it may or may not be based on fact: But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad. One of my favorite signs during the health care debate was somebody who said, “Keep Your Government Hands Out Of My Medicare” -- (laughter) -- which is essentially saying “Keep Government Out Of My Government-Run Health Care Plan.” (Laughter.) Obama might have been more troubled were the Tea Parties dominated by anti-government anarchists, which they were not. And, I don’t know if such a sign was ever displayed at a Tea Party. If one was, it is telling that he should choose that one to mock, and not any other sign that was non-contradictory, such as “Keep the Change, I’ll keep My Freedom.” That the audience laughed at his punch line is also telling. It would have laughed, also, had he mocked Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Obama did not have a “tough room” that rejected his humor, but rather a crowd friendly to him and to his policies. In his address, Obama called for the abandonment of “over-the-top rhetoric” in political debate. What debate? From his perspective, the expansion of federal power over virtually every aspect of American life, except, perhaps, in weaving AIDS doilies, is a foregone conclusion. He is of the same mentality as those global-warming believers who proclaimed that the “science is settled” and would the deniers please be so kind as to shut up? “Civility,” to Obama and his sycophants in Congress and the MSM, means that the looted victims should just concede defeat, go quietly away and submit to extortion and robbery without much protest. “Drop your written complaints in the customer suggestion box as you go out, please.” The trump card hidden up Obama's sleeve, behind his notion of “debate,” is force. If he loses the "debate," out will come the mandate. It would be an error to think that Obama does not understand the First Amendment, which reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. There are six key prohibitions in it one could easily argue he has violated himself, one after the other, or is capable of violating. It would be easy to dismiss his power-lust and desire to empower Congress beyond even the most specious argument for federal authority as simple misunderstanding or plain ignorance. Actions speak louder than words, if the actions complement the words. But there is an obvious disconnect between Obama’s words and his actions to date, a dichotomy which is consciously consistent with his desire to establish the state as the end-all and be-all of American life. He praises freedom, but enacts and sanctions slavery. It’s not a very subtle or skillful instance of rhetorical legerdemain, and more men should call him on it. He has proven that he is a compulsive liar. What one must come to grips with is his deliberate orchestration of the usurpation of the Constitution with the connivance of a willing Congress. For years, the man taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. At one time, he must have had the Constitution, relevant documents, and case histories memorized. He knows what he is doing. He intends to conquer. His University of Michigan address is rich with warning. And what I regard as particularly frightening is how Obama was greeted by a member of the crowd. It was reminiscent of the relationship between evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and her mobs of adorers. AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you! THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Laughter.) In all fairness, I have observed the same phenomenon between Sarah Palin and her admirers. Moreover, he would not have been able to get away with it had he any real opposition to his aggressive campaign against American freedom -- that is, opposition by a party that took its name literally and seriously. But, he doesn’t expect much in the way of opposition from the Republicans. He noted only three instances in his address of Republican presidents who advocated government programs, when he could have cited multiple dozens of other instances of “bipartisan“ collaboration in the establishment of the welfare state and federal controls, (He failed to credit George W. Bush with signing into law the expansion of unfunded Medicare prescription drug entitlements.) Picture Thomas Jefferson in a debate with Obama. The contrast could not be more stark. Posed with constitutional questions from a moderator, Jefferson, who confessed to not being much of a public speaker, still would have been able to answer eloquently, forcefully, credibly, and memorably without the aid of notes, rehearsed answers, or teleprompters. That was the caliber of man and mind that founded the United States. Obama would have to draw on his meager intellectual resources and the necessity to embellish his answers with dissembling ambiguity to participate in the debate. He would stumble badly. All he would project in the way of certitude is his belief in the welfare state and the authority of government to impose and govern it. If truth be said, it is a man of Jefferson’s caliber and stature he would like to see ostracized. Men of Jefferson’s mettle are anathemas to him and his allies. I do not think Harvard, Yale, or the University of Michigan are producing them, so he has little to worry about. At least, such men are not going into politics. However, how has Obama violated the First Amendment? Let us count the ways. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…… Are an unthinking advocacy of and an unreasoning belief in the welfare state symptoms of a religion? Can the absence of evidence of a supreme deity (whatever its name) be legitimately paired with the absence of evidence of the “truth” of the welfare state? Could welfare statism be treated as a state religion? Has it actually been established? Benito Mussolini proclaimed: “Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.” Would Obama dare contradict Mussolini’s assertion that the “keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.” How would he gloss over Mussolini’s dictum, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state,” in an attempt to make his words sound like a pæan to liberty and homage to the Founders? Obama’s belief in the welfare state and government power has permitted him to caution, in words dulcified by his humor, but openly and with the approval of 92,000 listeners in the University of Michigan stadium, that criticism and opposition to his agenda are intolerable and that he could be persuaded to do something about it. The belief in the “rightness” or “truth” of the welfare state is of the same species of belief as that about God or a supreme “intelligent designer.” It is simply a truism, never to be questioned, only accepted on faith as infallible and inspired. The “greatest good for the greatest number,” in a welfare state, however and historically, always proves to be the greatest misery for the greatest number. But, belief in the welfare state is “true faith.” Belief in it is reason- and evidence-proof. Both parties adhere to the belief. Believers simply dismiss reason and the evidence of its destructiveness. It is a genuine “article of faith,” infallible and beyond doubt. The alleged efficacy of the welfare state as a vehicle for “social justice” is a revealed supernatural verity. Revealed by whom? By the works of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Lenin, and countless other humanitarians. Their opposite numbers are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Their vicars on earth can be represented by Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, and Hitler. What difference should it make to a man if he is slain with a Christian metropolitan, an Islamic scimitar, or by all 906 pages of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 dropped on his head? (That is the official page count.) …or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…. Neither Obama nor Congress has yet prohibited the free exercise of anyone’s religion. If welfare statism can be called a religion, Obama and Congress (and their predecessors) have freely exercised it, and taxed all other denominations to support it. Better informed students of American history think we got away from this kind of thing with the Declaration of Independence. …or abridging the freedom of speech…. The most recent abridgement of freedom of speech, the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Law, was dealt a serious blow by the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Citizens United case. But the Federal Election Commission has not been dissolved and it retains some power to decide who may and may not exercise speech during election campaigns. …or of the press…. The traditional press, together with broadcast news, has not needed to be controlled or censored by the government. With few exceptions, and with a variety of passions, the MSM have for decades largely endorsed the federal government’s expansion of power. The new “press” is the Internet, and Cass Sunstein, head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and others in the Obama administration, are devising rationales and ways to control this new press, lately through the net neutrality scam. They’re still pondering how to suppress speech without calling it censorship. …or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…. The people peaceably assembled, repeatedly, in countless cities and towns, for over a year. The only incidents of violence were when these assemblies were invaded or infiltrated by those with malicious intent, or with the Saul Alinskyite purpose of discrediting the assemblies. These incidents were instigated at the behest of organizations in alliance with the Democratic Party, which hired proxies to do what it could not do publicly. …and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Countless emails, letters, faxes, literal petitions, and telephone voice messages from American citizens deluged members of Congress protesting the contents, aim, and scale of ObamaCare. To no avail. State lawsuits are now being filed against the federal government for Congressional over-reach and for violation of states’ rights. Doubtless some of these and private suits will wend their way to the Supreme Court. But, what good is the liberty to petition the government to redress grievances, when an authoritarian regime can ignore the petitions and dismiss the grievances as “racist,” “homophobic,” “Nazi,” or “anti-government”? Or simply because it doesn’t wish to recognize them? To be sure, “civility” requires courtesy and the premise that issues can be discussed or debated without resorting to ad hominem and ridicule. It does not necessarily imply “respect” for an opponent’s views, but rather disagreement with the fundamentals of those views, and a willingness to attempt persuasion by way of refutation. It also requires an esteem, if not for his views, then at least for an opponent’s honesty, intelligence, and standing in his field. “Disagreement ” with the positions and arguments of opponents of ObamaCare has been and continues to be delinquent in the actions and statements of Obama and the Democrats. In its place is an elitist, patronizing hubris that does not deign to recognize dissension. Esteem in civility has not been accorded the Republicans, the Tea Party, and the American electorate at any step in the pursuit of Obama’s and Congress’s legislative agenda. Given all the lies, deceit, machinations, behind-closed-doors deal-making and horse-trading, bribery, billions in pork, scabrous arrogance, ridicule, derogatory statements, vilification, demonization, and brazen disregard for the Constitution and individual rights and a concomitant indifference to the consequences that have marked Obama’s administration and Congress’s behavior, Obama has no right to lecture anyone on the subject of “civility.” Because “civility,” to him, is just another way to silence his opposition. He may speak loudly and distinctly; he expects the rest of us to mutter, sotto voce, “But, it‘s wrong!” Cross-posted from Metablog

In response to the recent threats made by Islamists against the creators of South Park, here is my homage to Elvis and blasphemy to the prophet Muhammad and his wicked and intolerant disciples who threaten freedom of speech. Cross-posted from Metablog

I do not make many incursions into the realm of art here, but the Comedy Central/”South Park” imbroglio beckons to me. It is interesting and very important, as many other commentators have noted. It is not just about displaying images of Mohammed or offending Muslim religious sensibilities. It is about freedom of speech. As evil as government-enforced censorship is, self-censorship is arguably a worse evil. It means that a government bureau needn’t threaten you with punishment if you refuse to wear its gag; you volunteer to fix the tape over your mouth (or your mind) yourself. The speech police are not meant for you, but rather for those incautious fools who insist on indulging in what former president Bill Clinton called “careless language” that hurts or offends. Self-muted, you are merely a neutral, blameless spectator, watching those efficient SWAT teams descend on the perpetrators and roust them from their beds, jobs, rights, and futures. Some reactions to the alleged censorship of “South Park’s” fillip to freedom of speech deserve examination. I should caution that having seen or sampled past episodes of this relatively primitively done cartoon program, for me its humor is consistently coarse and offensive, ergo boring. For cartoon humor, give me Daffy Duck, or “Fractured Fairy Tales,” or the Road Runner. I’ve seen better animation in anti-Semitic Palestinian cartoon programs than the static hand-puppet-like actions in “South Park.” (And production of those Palestinian cartoons is undoubtedly assisted with the generous support of readers like you -- the American taxpayer -- through foreign aid.) As for humor itself, I prefer that of Oscar Wilde, or of Noël Coward, or even of “Fawlty Towers” or "Wodehouse Playhouse” over a regular diet of Lenny Bruce or “Married With Children.” I grew out of the cartoon stage of “funny” decades ago, thank you very much. The Washington Post ran an article about seventeen cartoonists who signed a petition against “threats” against Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators and writers of “South Park,” by Revolution Muslim, whose blog host insists that it was merely a “warning.” I fail to see the distinction. Incidentally, the cartoonists condemned” Comedy Central’s “censorship.“ It may be commendable that other cartoonists have spoken out against Islamic censorship by murder. However, "censorship" is the wrong term to employ when judging Comedy Central‘s actions. Only a government can impose censorship on state matters (spy secrets, military matters, etc.) or on citizens to stop discussion or disclosure of the truth. Hugo Chavez shutting down private Venezuelan newspapers and radio and television stations is censorship. He employs force. Comedy Central’s executives did not employ force. They edited. Look at it this way: a newspaper employs editors to edit its writers' stories and columns, sometimes objectively with an eye to economy and style, other times with a bias that conforms to a political agenda handed down from higher up. That is not censorship; it is editing. I can wish that Comedy Central had let the Mohammed segments run, but when a would-be terrorist states that he has the names, personal and work addresses of the "offenders" and more or less suggests to fellow Muslims that they prove their devotion to Allah and Mohammed by garroting Parker and Stone, it was prudent to not provoke the terrorist or anyone wishing to engage in what Hirsi Ali has called in the Wall Street Journal an "informal fatwa." It was a wise decision pending whatever actions the FBI or whoever is responsible takes to find and reel in Zack Chesser, a Muslim convert. Comedy Central's executives did not employ censorship. They exercised their right to edit. We can fault them for the reason -- which may have been cowardice -- but not for the action. If the cartoonists quoted in this story wish to accuse anyone of censorship, they should focus on Islam and Muslims. It is Islam that sanctions gagging, by lawsuits, by intimidation, or by direct force. And while most Muslims wouldn’t think of sticking machetes into Trey Parker or Matt Stone, they remain silent, for their creed forbids them, under pain of a similar fate, to object to that form of jihad, or because they agree with permanently silencing the blasphemers. Whether out of fear or agreement, silence is a sanction. There have been other incidents in this country of publishers self-censoring themselves in the face of threatened violence. These would not have been necessary had our government eradicated states that sponsor terrorism; at the moment, these are exclusively Islamic states. Instead of protecting its citizens against Islamic jihad, President Barack Obama sanctions the “cleansing” of all references to Islam from national security documents. The Wall Street Journal ran two distinctly different perspectives on the “South Park” episode. James Taranto, in “Everybody Burn the Flag,” ran a fallacy-ridden piece that scores the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” phenomenon, which invites Americans to draw Mohammed to their hearts’ content and which has produced hundreds on the Internet. His basic argument is that drawing Mohammed in defiance of an Islamic taboo against images of the prophet is inconsiderate of Muslim beliefs, and therefore is wrong. Why is "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" different? Because the taboo against depictions of Muhammad is not a part of America's common culture. The taboos against flag burning, racial slurs and Holocaust denial are. The problem with the "in-your-face message" of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" is not just that it is inconsiderate of the sensibilities of others, but that it defines those others--Muslims--as being outside of our culture, unworthy of the courtesy we readily accord to insiders. It is an unwise message to send, assuming that one does not wish to make an enemy of the entire Muslim world. So, we should refrain from asserting the right to mock a religion whose adherents bow to a rock five times a day, conform to a primitive, Dark Age theology, and condone, vocally or in silence, the murders of those who mock the religion, lest we make an enemy of the entire Muslim world? I have news for Mr. Taranto: We are already the enemy of that world. And why not telegraph to Muslims that they are outsiders and not part of a “common culture”? Their creed sanctions its destruction so that there is only one culture, a stifling, mind-suffocating Islamic one. If Muslims wish to redeem themselves, they should speak out against Chesser and his very large company of potential and actual “martyrs,” past, present, and future. But, they can’t, not without implicitly repudiating their creed. They elicit no sympathy from me. Boundless contempt, yes. And I can and will continue to mock any religious faith, regardless of its taboos. I am no friend of the irrational, secular or religious. Why should one be “considerate” to a another’s deeply held beliefs, when one knows them to be irrational and rife with fallacies? Consideration implies respect for the irrational, which sabotages one’s respect for the rational. It puts them on the same footing. The rational earns one’s respect; the irrational invites disrespect and mockery. The Wall Street Journal also ran an op-ed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a person who has had more intimate and perilous experiences with Muslim sensibilities than has Taranto and so speaks with a more realistic perspective. The threat made by Zack Chesser, she warns, should be taken seriously, even though it appears that Chesser, a Muslim convert, is a “lone wolf” and perhaps a basket case. Theo van Gogh, her partner in the production of Submission, a short film about the Islamic view and treatment of women, was murdered on an Amsterdam street by just such a “lone wolf,” who, it turned out, was part of a larger group of Islamic conspirators. So how worried should the creators of "South Park" be about the "marginal figures" who now threaten them? Very. In essence, Mr. Amrikee's [Chesser’s] posting is an informal fatwa. Here's how it works: There is a basic principle in Islamic scripture—unknown to most not-so-observant Muslims and most non-Muslims—called "commanding right and forbidding wrong." It obligates Muslim males to police behavior seen to be wrong and personally deal out the appropriate punishment as stated in scripture. In its mildest form, devout people give friendly advice to abstain from wrongdoing. Less mild is the practice whereby Afghan men feel empowered to beat women who are not veiled. By publicizing the supposed sins of Messrs. Stone and Parker, Mr. Amrikee undoubtedly believes he is fulfilling his duty to command right and forbid wrong. His message is not just an opinion. It will appeal to like-minded individuals who, even though they are a minority, are a large and random enough group to carry out the divine punishment. The best illustration of this was demonstrated by the Somali man who broke into Mr. Westergaard's home in January carrying an axe and a knife. On the other side of art, a grand indictment of President Barack Obama has appeared, courtesy of an individual who has produced some of the best “poster art” of Obama since the 2008 presidential campaign. In it one encounters a broad statement that encapsulates the character and destiny of his whole administration, which is fated to be a one-term wonder. It is called “The Rise and Fall of Hope and Change,” and is an alteration of French artist Thomas Couture’s finely detailed and lively fresco, “The Romans During the Decadence” (1847). “Rise and Fall” captures the literal orgy of the mindless and drunken character of the current Washington regime in a way no other poster art about Obama has. Coulture’s painting hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. While I am not an advocate of adulterating genuinely great or near-great art -- it is rare enough and is certainly not being produced in our “common culture” today, and its political and commercial adulterating is symptomatic of our culture’s bankruptcy -- the cartoonist responsible for “The Rise and Fall” deserves some recognition for his own “in your face” satire. Is the painting offensive to Obama or to his loyal admirers? Perhaps. It concretizes -- relying on artistic skills no longer evident in our culture -- the essential corruption and brazen insouciance of Obama and his extraordinarily large clique of office-holders and allies in Congress and in the mainstream media. This clique has been successful in abrogating the Constitution and violating the individual rights of Americans at home and abroad (re the concerted hunt by the Treasury Department for “illegal” offshore wealth and bringing American ex-patriots to “justice”) Offending Obama and his “believers in change,“ however, is far less important than distilling and expressing the anger of all who have been offended and, hurt and condemned by him and his clique. Is it disrespectful of the President of the United States? To the office, no. To the subject of the painting, yes, and it is an earned disrespect which Obama shares with every figure in the tableau. The central focus is a statue of him as a triumphant, Caesar-like icon and Obama as a flesh-and-blood reveler, leaning to offer Hillary Clinton what one surmises is a grape (a consolation prize, the office of Secretary of State), while Michelle Obama’s head rests on his lap. “Rise and Fall” could easily be retitled “The Obama Bacchanal.” In the painting one can see the faces of Tim Geithner, John Kerry, KSM, Oprah, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, David Axelrod, Obama, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, the two party crashers, Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Bluto (John Belushi, of Animal House notoriety?), Andy Stern, Bill Clinton, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Barney Frank, and Kevin Jennings. All the usual suspects. The five statues are of Che Guevara, Saul Alinsky, Obama, Chairman Mao, and Vladimir Lenin. The reworked statues to the right and left represent the essential ideology of the current administration and its adherents in Congress. Who is missing from this gallery of rogues? One would need to recreate a Colosseum-sized banquet hall to include just the more prominent but absent Democratic Party animals in the Obama bacchanal: Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel, Henry “Pigman” Waxman, Sonia Sotomayor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius, Bill Ayers, Steny Hoyer, and Alan Grayson. Press secretary Robert Gibbs could be portrayed as a puckish court jester, outfitted in the traditional donkey-eared cap with bells, pointy slippers, brandishing a mock scepter, and performing an amusing dance on the backs of the prone, submissive figures of Goldman-Sachs executives in hair shirts. Mohammed and Obama should be regularly and offensively characterized as the destructive demons they are. The ineradicable facts about them, so widely disseminated in books, studies, and testimony, available to anyone who chooses to see and to think, support such expression. One demon represents the religious variation of censorship; the other represents an intention to practice the secular version. Free-thinking Americans should oppose both, speak out, and support anyone targeted and personalized by either faction. And, in the meantime, they should draw the images of both “prophets” to their hearts’ content. Cross-posted from Metablog

Former President Bill Clinton revealed his totalitarian bent during an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper on April 17, when he linked Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building in 1995 with current “anti-government“ rhetoric, rallies and demonstrations by Tea Partiers. It is almost surreal, listening to this vile, hypocritical, amoral person pontificating on the necessity for civil debate. His language was banal, but in its banality, lurked evil. One can’t decide if Clinton was speaking ad libitum or reciting a memorized lesson. It sounded like a rehearsed spiel. Perhaps it was a teleprompter he was reading over Tapper’s shoulder, out of camera shot. His focus was on “demonization” he said can motivate people to commit atrocious crimes. He is a product of the Frankfurt social engineering school of politics: men have no real volition, they are just products of their social and economic environment, and not really responsible for their values or actions -- until, mysteriously, a force compels them to make a choice and turn to violence or to utter nasty things about their perceived oppressors. Except, of course, if they happen to be leftists, Democratic flunkies, the Students for a Democratic Society, Bill Ayers, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and a large company of enemies of capitalism, individual rights, limited government, and civil debate. Then, violence is okay. They’re on the side of the totalitarians and social engineers in government. Their “demonization” and “careless language” are forgiven when by chance they’re remembered. The Frankfurt School, as readers might remember, was an institution that promoted communism and socialism and heavily influenced especially American academia in virtually all the humanities. Banned in Germany by Hitler, it moved to the U.S. and established the New School for Social Research in New York. It reestablished itself in Germany after the war. If the Frankfurt School acted as the theoretical arm of socialist/fascist advocacy, Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton’s mentor in political action, was its most prominent field agent. Clinton himself was the Progressive heir to John F. Kennedy. I have kept for years a New York Times full-page photo of 17-year-old Bill Clinton, then a member of the American Legion Boys Club, shaking hands with JFK in the White House Rose Garden in July 1963. I dubbed the photo “Passing the Torch of Fascism.” I kept it to remind me of the link between Clinton’s polices and JFK’s and how those policies, if not questioned and throttled, would continue to be implemented and expanded under Republicans and Democrats alike in the future. During his two terms as president, Clinton and his wife worked to advance statism. According to one fawning article: Clinton was one of the first in line to shake President Kennedy's hand in the Rose Garden. That event was one of the most important experiences of his youth. After that, he knew he wanted to make a difference in the lives of the people of America by becoming President of the United States . Again, listening to Clinton ramble on about the consequences of “violence-provoking” rhetoric like a cracker-barrel yahoo in the backwaters of Arkansas, one cannot believe this person is emblematic of the forces that have been working to convert the vestiges of a constitutional republic into a European style socialist “republic” governed by an elective and appointive political elite. However, a scrutiny of the moral and intellectual depths and make-up of most of our current political leaders -- including Republicans, but especially of the ones in power now, the Democrats -- leaves one the poorer for the effort. They are neither sinister nor brilliant; they exhibit no evidence of being “evil geniuses.” They are “ordinary” in the sense that they are non-intellectual opportunists taking advantage of an absence of reason in politics, a phenomenon of which they are not aware. They are the cockroaches, poisonous centipedes, and maggots who can infest an unoccupied house. There. I’ve demonized Pelosi, Frank, Reid and many more. So, sue me, Bill. In answer to Tapper’s question about Rush Limbaugh’s charge that, because of a speech Clinton gave about the 15th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing by McVeigh, Clinton would be responsible for future violence, Clinton answered: The only point I tried to make is that when I went back and started preparing for the 15th anniversary of Oklahoma City, I realized that there were a lot of parallels between the early '90s and now, both in the feeling of economic dislocation, and the level of uncertainty people felt. The rise of kind of identity politics. The rise of the militia movements and the right wing talk radio with a lot of what's going on in the blogosphere now. That was his opening remark. What an invitation to regulate the Internet. And in the right wing media, and with Oath Keepers, the 3 percenters, the -- all these people, you know, who are saying things like, "If Idaho wants to succeed from the union," the militia group out there says, you know, "We'll back them." One leader of one of these groups said that all politics was just a prelude to civil war. And then the politicians of course have not been that serious, but a lot of the things that have been said, they -- they create a climate in which people who are vulnerable to violence because they are disoriented like Timothy McVeigh was are more likely to act. And the only point I tried to make was that we ought to have a lot of political dissent -- a lot of political argument. Nobody is right all the time. But we also have to take responsibility for the possible consequences of what we say. And we shouldn't demonize the government or its public employees or its elected officials. We can disagree with them. We can harshly criticize them. But when we turn them into an object of demonization, you know, you -- you increase the number of threats. But I worry about these threats against the president and the Congress. And I worry about more careless language even against -- some of which we've seen against the Republican governor in New Jersey, Governor Christie. As Tony Blankley in Real Clear Politics and Philip Klein in American Spectator note in their incisive articles, this is the “same old, same old” from Clinton’s Alinskyite playbook: check anyone who voices anti-big-government ideas and criticisms by demonizing them in return with suggestions of “probable” violence, sedition, insurrection, or otherwise disturbing the public peace. Bethania Assy, in her essay on Hannah Arendt’s book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, reports on Arendt’s surprise by how innocuous Adolf Eichmann looked. Hannah Arendt's first reaction to Eichmann, "the man in the glass booth," was — nicht einmal unheimlich — not even sinister." She argues that "The deeds were monstrous, but the doer ... was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous." Arendt's perception that Eichmann seemed to be a common man, evidenced in his transparent superficiality and mediocrity, left her astonished in measuring the unaccounted evil committed by him, that is, organizing the deportation of millions of Jews to the concentration camps. Actually, what Arendt had detected in Eichmann was not even stupidity, in her words, he portrayed something entirely negative, it was thoughtlessness. Eichmann's ordinariness implied in an incapacity for independent critical thought: "... the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think." . This is not to suggest that Clinton is or could have become another Eichmann; rather, it is to know that Clinton’s banality -- and that of countless other “ordinary” individuals who have never had an original thought in their entire lives and don’t intend to -- makes possible the kinds of crimes a demonic or monstrous Eichmann could commit. Think of all the political non-entities in Weimar and Nazi Germany whose public pronouncements on politics are forgotten, but whose words helped to move countless thoughtless Germans in the direction of the Third Reich. Clinton, as contemptuous of America as his current successor in office, simply repeated the smear against opposition to Obama’s policies launched by the left and the Democrats. It was indeed a thoughtless iteration of the same charge, solicited by Tapper, a “journalist” far down in the ranks of those who want to believe, rather than think. Thoughtless? Yes, to the extent that Clinton did not need to remember anything but what he has been told, taught, and was expected to repeat all his life -- and has never questioned. In this instance, on cue from Tapper, he merely weaved the same old bromides and catch phrases of the left into his homey delivery of an answer. He did not need -- and certainly didn’t feel the need to -- to look reflective and check his words, and reply something to the effect: “Well, you know, all the bad things being said about the Tea Party and Americans being worried about the government, that’s unfair, because none of the people I saw on TV looked like they were about to blow up buildings like Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma City, I don’t think these people are disturbed in the way McVeigh was. I think that’s a disgraceful accusation and someone ought to apologize for it. They looked like ordinary, angry Americans who think they’re getting a raw deal from the government, so, who can blame them? I don‘t agree with anything they‘ve said, but they should be allowed to say it without being called racists or bigots or Nazis.” That’s what Clinton could have said. But didn’t. And couldn’t. He has been credited with being a shrewd politician, able to play sides against each other and come out the winner. But, is that thought, or is it merely the feral instincts of a predator, who “thinks” in terms of pressure points, favors, slander, extortion, arm-twisting, personalities, deceit, fraud, and gaming a corrupt system? Why was Clinton asked for his thoughts? Because the Left has been searching desperately for an “official” sanction of their unrelenting smear campaign against Americans who oppose the take-over of their lives and wealth by Obama and Congress. And they chose, not so ironically, “Grand Old Man” Bill Clinton, a creature only a little less vile, hypocritical, amoral, power-lusting, and slickly dissimulating than his current successor in the Oval Office. Or, rather, “they” didn’t choose him; he simply fell into line, as did Tapper. Birds of a feather. Was Tapper part of a conspiracy? Was he asked to solicit Clinton’s all-too-predictable opinion? No. It was just part of the liberal political culture in which Tapper resides. It was as natural for him to pose the question to Clinton as it would be for a priest to query the Pope on a theological matter. Clinton represents the Left’s conception of a respectable, “disinterested” third-party concurring in his own distinctive style with the notion that “angry rhetoric” and “careless language” pose a threat of violence, and with Obama’s growl that Tea Party dissension should be “toned down.” The hypocrisy of Clinton, the Democrats, and the Left is the least serious charge one could lay on them. Clinton’s political record is so rife with corruption and underhanded political manipulation it doesn’t need recounting here. I suspect that he deliberately sabotaged his wife’s bid for the Democratic nomination in hopes of foisting Obama on the country; I refuse to believe he is so stupid and gauche to say the things he said during her campaign without meaning his statements to have some consequence. Perhaps that was his vengeance on her and on the country that nominally rejected his and her socialist policies when Al Gore’s bid for power went down in flames in 2000. The Clinton marriage has always been one of political convenience; I do not think they see each other much, with Bill traveling hither and yon collecting munificent speaking fees and playing the humanitarian, and Hillary globe-trotting doing Obama’s bidding to betray our allies and make friends of tin pot tyrants. That’s her vengeance on the country that rejected her. I believe this conjecture is valid, founded on the characters and whorish behavior of both Clintons in their quest for power. It is unfortunate that the Democrats and leftists have appropriated the term “demonization.” But, I refuse to argue the issue on the enemy’s terms. A demon, after all, is either an evil spirit intent on causing mischief, or it’s a tormenting anxiety about something. Americans certainly see the Obama agenda as inherently evil and promising nothing but mischief, and they’re right to be anxious to the point of torment that the agenda means them no good. Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann, to whom Clinton referred when he remarked that some politicians “create a climate in which people who are vulnerable to violence are disoriented,” for example, did not “demonize” the Obama administration and Congress by calling it a “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC1i8j9CZuU.” She characterized it, by correctly identifying the key features and consequences of legislative fraud (and gave columnist Michael Barone credit for coining the term; has any Democrat or administration official given Saul Alinsky credit for the smear tactic? They don‘t dare.). Then, it was merely the consequences of the government take-over of General Motors. As it is clear now to anyone with two eyes and a functioning mind -- a mind that is willing to see the ample evidence and is wiling to think -- the term can be applied to the whole of Obama’s administration. Bill Clinton is a minor but prominent player in the ongoing debacle. His words on the Tea Party and talk radio and Timothy McVeigh were intended to elevate a disgusting smear campaign from blatantly obvious turpitude to the level of righteous moral concern. He opened his mouth and scurrilous words came from it. We have heard all he said before -- from President Barack Obama, from Nancy Pelosi, from Harry Reid, from Barney Frank, from the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the MSM -- and those are the voices we heard when Bill Clinton spoke. He sits on the liberal/left lap, and others move his mouth. Mortimer Snerd, anyone? Cross-posted from Metablog

Tweedledum and Tweedledee Agreed to have a battle; For Tweedledum said Tweedledee Had spoiled his nice new rattle. Just then flew down a monstrous crow, As black as a tar-barrel; Which frightened both the heroes so, They quite forgot their quarrel. And passed ObamaCare against the wishes of most Americans, in defiance of the Constitution, in a wholesale negation of individual rights. That is representative democracy in action. Hardly the leitmotif of a rights-protecting republic. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, indeed. They were both holding that rattle in their tight little fists. The monstrous crow was…the Tea Party. The pending initiatives over the constitutionality and legality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA Pub. L. No. 111-148), better known as ObamaCare, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, should make for an interesting spring, summer, fall and winter in 2010. It can take on the drama and perhaps heartbreak of Alfred the Great fighting the invasion of and occupation of Britain by the Danes, or of Washington’s victory over the British at Trenton and Princeton in 1776, or of a barroom brawl and melee, no last man standing but the bartender with his baseball bat, and all the felled participants bloodied and groaning. Short of reading all the provisions and costs of the law, and delving into the details of its Senate-inspired companion (which is not receiving nearly as much attention), the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Pub. L. 111-152), signed into law on March 30, I recommend Wikipedia’s précis of both laws. The second law is a product of reconciliation with the Senate version of the House’s. But, as the federal government prepares to stonewall any action against ObamaCare, state or private, the question in everyone’s mind is: How successful will all those suits and actions be? ObamaCare specifically states that states may not contravene the individual mandate (formerly, the compulsory “public option”) or any other provision of the law, presumably basing that assertion on the supremacy and commerce clauses of the Constitution. If a state insists on the validity of its own conflicting statutes, ObamaCare stipulates that it must enact a companion law that complements the federal one and accomplishes the same thing, which is mandated health insurance, and establish its own bureaucracies to administer it. It allows no opting out by individuals or states. This is a claim of non-severability that binds the states as well as individuals to comply with the law. Two state attorneys general, Robert Cordray of Ohio and Tom Miller of Iowa, are dismissive of other states’ suits against the government over ObamaCare. Under long-settled Supreme Court precedents, Congress has ample power under the commerce clause of the Constitution to legislate on health care. Congress has the authority to regulate anything that affects interstate commerce “among the several States.” This is bolstered by the supremacy clause, which explicitly makes the Constitution and the laws of the United States “the supreme Law of the Land” for all Americans. For Congress to have the power to pass this legislation, therefore, the health care problem need only affect interstate commerce. It clearly does. One northern Virginia attorney concurs, and cites Justice Antonin Scalia’s five-year old endorsement of the federal government’s powers derived from the commerce clause: The regulation of an intrastate activity may be essential to a comprehensive regulation of interstate commerce even though the intrastate activity does not itself “substantially affect” interstate commerce. Moreover, as the passage from Lopez quoted above suggests, Congress may regulate even non-economic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce. See Lopez, supra, at 561. The relevant question is simply whether the means chosen are “reasonably adapted” to the attainment of a legitimate end under the commerce power. See Darby, supra, at 121. The states will argue that the law is unconstitutional because it violates both the supremacy and commerce clauses. Virginia asserts not only that, but that if unconstitutionality is proven, state law -- in this instance, its recently enacted Health Care Freedom Act -- is consequently constitutional and sovereign. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli first addressed the supremacy clause: …. f a federal law is proved unconstitutional while a conflicting state law is constitutional, the state law will prevail. We in the attorney general's office feel that the new federal individual mandate — the requirement that everyone be forced to buy government-approved health insurance by 2014 or face fines — is unconstitutional. And then the commerce clause: It is unconstitutional because the federal government is claiming that the source of its power for imposing the mandate is the Constitution's "commerce clause," which gives the federal government the power to "regulate commerce among the several states …" We argue that if someone isn't buying insurance, then — by definition — he is not participating in commerce. How, then, can the government use the commerce clause to regulate non-commerce, i.e., regulating inactivity? In my January 6th commentary, “States’ Rights: Dumb Show and Noise,” I noted that: In the meantime, over two dozen states, also citing the Tenth Amendment, have drafted proposals, resolutions or amendments to their state constitutions that would nullify any federal health care legislation that may pass, because the power of Congress to enact such legislation is not enumerated. This movement smacks of secessionism. If courts subsequently and consistently uphold the federal law for whatever illogical reason -- progressing from the initial suits to appeal, perhaps even up to the Supreme Court -- what alternatives would be left to the states but to submit? States would be faced with an unprecedented conundrum: submission to federal law, or secession (unprecedented, at least, since the Civil War and the civil rights movement era). What are the chances of secession? Virtually nil, because, as I pointed out in “Dumb Show and Noise,” most states are dependent on federal funds for a multitude of other government enterprises, including highway building and maintenance and healthcare. South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster discusses merely the healthcare part of that intractable issue: Medicaid was originally designed to be a voluntary federal-state partnership, but this new health care law turns it into a compulsory, top-down federal program in which the discretion of the states is removed….A 61 percent increase in Medicaid enrollees will force the state to spend billions of dollars to hire and train new employees to comply and implement the expansion of the state Medicaid program under national health care…. Even if you believe that it has still has the legal option, South Carolina could not realistically withdraw from participating in Medicaid, because over the more than four decades of its existence, the state has become increasingly dependent on federal funds for its operation. Washington politicians know this, and use this undeniable fact to force states to comply with their will. This violates the core constitutional principle of federalism upon which this nation was founded. In so doing, the national health care law exceeds the powers of the United States and in a second way violates the Tenth Amendment. So, the state has the power to tax South Carolinians to administer Medicaid, but the federal government hasn’t? Where is the voluntary role for individuals in that program? (Actually, the South Carolinian is being taxed twice: once by the federal government, and then by the state.) The issue of the Tenth Amendment and states’ rights may be dismissed by any court. The list of state suits is likely to grow, as state attorneys general and governors absorb the implications of the law and the fiscal burdens it will impose on the states. What are the powers reserved to the states (or “to the people”) by the Tenth Amendment? It is curious that while states are bringing action against the federal government -- specifically against the Department of Health and Human Services, which is charged with administering ObamaCare -- citing a breach of the Amendment, state powers to regulate, control and mandate are also open to the question of their constitutionality. Myriad state laws contradict and violate the fundamental intention of the Constitution, which is to preserve and protect individual rights. Only seven states have no personal income tax, except on dividends and income from interest. Five states have no corporate income tax, nor any sales tax. Numerous counties and municipalities impose their own sales taxes, in addition to licensing fees and various business taxes. Property and estate taxes exist in all states. States regulate insurance companies, practice eminent domain, and regulate alcohol sales and consumption, smoking, auto emissions, building standards, and so on. Where is the surcease of federal powers and those reserved to the states? While Congress may have exceeded its enumerated powers, where is the check on state law? What are the restricting enumerated powers delegated to states? What prevents states from committing the same offense they charge the federal government of committing? Nothing. One paragraph from the Case Law site points up this issue, argued by now-retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (not one of my favorite justices): … ecause the dispute involved the division of authority between federal and state governments, Justice O'Connor wrote for the Court, one could inquire whether Congress acted under a delegated power or one could ask whether Congress had invaded a state province protected by the Tenth Amendment. But, said the Justice, ''the two inquiries are mirror images of each other. If a power is delegated to Congress in the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment expressly disclaims any reservation of that power to the States; if a power is an attribute of state sovereignty reserved by the Tenth Amendment, it is necessarily a power the Constitution has not conferred on Congress.'' While the pot can call the kettle black, the kettle can call the pot black, as well. Briefly, the Constitution prohibits Congress from usurping state sovereignty. Yet, states may violate individual rights -- the sovereignty of an individual over his own life and property -- with impunity as long as Congress doesn’t first claim the prerogative. In his statement about the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare, Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli let drop one interesting piece of information: To the second question, why states can mandate the purchase of auto insurance, but the federal government cannot mandate the purchase of health insurance: The federal government is subject to the constraints of the U.S. Constitution. The Founding Fathers laid out specific and limited powers for the federal government and reserved the rest "to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words, the states have powers the federal government does not. For example, the states do have the authority the federal government lacks to impose a health insurance mandate. [italics mine.] I have not seen this issue addressed elsewhere, not even by Judge Andrew Napolitano, who is even more voluble in his charges against Congress than any of the state attorneys general. He has noted: "The Constitution does not authorize the Congress to regulate the state governments," Napolitano says. "Nevertheless, in this piece of legislation, the Congress has told the state governments that they must modify their regulation of certain areas of healthcare, they must surrender their regulation of other areas of healthcare, and they must spend state taxpayer-generated dollars in a way that the Congress wants it done. Napolitano tells Newsmax that the longstanding precedent of state regulation of the healthcare industry makes the new federal regulations that much more problematic. "The Supreme Court has ruled that in areas of human behavior that are not delegated to the Congress in the Constitution, and that have been traditionally regulated by the states, the Congress can't simply move in there," Napolitano says. "And the states for 230 years have had near exclusive regulation over the delivery of healthcare. The states license hospitals. The states license medications. The states license healthcare providers whether they're doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. The feds have had nothing to do with it….” But what logical difference would it make to an individual if his state government may enact a rights-violating law that Congress may not, one having the same end and which is equally pernicious? One must question the scope and foundations of the moral reasoning of the more prominent opponents of ObamaCare. The suits being filed by the state attorneys general, while employing some startling language, do not expressly promote individual rights, do not recognize that men own their own lives and property, and do not assert that individual rights are inviolate regardless of the proximity of a government. They are little more than claims of power-wielding jurisdictional turf against a greater power-wielding entity. Given the Constitution-scrapping precedents set by all three branches of the federal government over more than a century, these claims are destined to fail. The federal government is the bartender with the baseball bat. *I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edition., 1997), p. 418. Cross-posted from Metablog

I ended my July 5th, 2009 commentary, “Parsing Obama,” with reference to a remark made by Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, that, to understand President Barack Obama, one must pay attention to what he does, not to what he says. On March 23 we paid attention to what he both said and did: he conscripted the medical and insurance fields into government service, and claimed he looked up into the sky and saw no asteroids hurtling toward the earth as punishment for enacting such a law. It was an “historic event” that he proved did not trigger the wrath of nature. Such flippant mockery of the opponents of ObamaCare is easy to understand, and the “historic event’ will be another day that will live in infamy. Trying to shame a flippant Obama over his lies, posturing, and political subterfuge is as futile as throwing spitballs at a charging rhino, or shooting rubber bands at a provoked bull. He isn’t going to be stopped. He intends to knock you down and gore you until you move no more, and for extra measure, toss you into the air a few times to make sure you‘re no longer a threat or a provocation. His collectivist soul and commitment to subduing America requires that he be deaf to public opposition to his agenda and heedless of the consequences of bringing it to implementation. This requires the habitual and ultimately ingrained psychological insulation adopted by all power-lusters and dictators. They don’t like being contradicted, questioned, or doubted. It is akin to the psycho-epistemological state of James Taggart in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, who introduces himself with an impatient, “Don’t bother me, don’t bother me, don’t bother me.” As it is with Taggart, reality is Obama’s enemy; wishing seems to make it go away, and if there are unfortunate consequences of that action, they will fall on other people, not on him. In an excellent analysis of Obama’s habitual pragmatism, Doug Reich on The Rational Capitalist site ably parses the workings of the mind of a pragmatist when dealing with unwelcome questions and issues. It was not Mr. Reich’s purpose, but his essay doesn’t address the question of why an individual would adopt such a practice, for example, of Obama’s evident hostility for anything that threatens to contradict his own ideological premises. Examining Obama’s 17-minute “answer” to a simple question about the wisdom of raising taxes, Obama oscillated between using words, on one hand, as weapons, and on the other, as excelsior. Obama does not speak so much “Newspeak” as he does “No Speak.” His delivery style, in which he cannot or will not speak truthfully in generalities, and when faced with public questions, can be characterized as tossing a hundred tightly crumpled pieces of paper into a waste basket, and leaving listeners to retrieve them, flatten them out, and piece them together, if possible, into a coherent whole. As a pragmatic policy, it is one he is comfortable with. But it doesn’t mean that it is unintentional, either. It is his preferred way of fending off ideas and words that imperil his epistemology and metaphysics. He is probably certain that a basketball will go through a hoop and that a golf ball will land on the green somewhere. But he cannot be certain of much else. More importantly, certainty isn’t crucial to him. Things like economics, finance, market forces, individual rights, and certainly the language of the Constitution are beyond his grasp because he chooses them to be. He is not the only president to adopt a policy of public and personal obfuscation (Ayn Rand called it “blanking out“); Republican and Democratic ones honed the practice over generations. Obama is only the latest but crudest practitioner of it. For example, an Associated Press report reveals that Islam and jihad are no longer going to be acceptable subjects in reviewing national security strategy. President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say…. The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the U.S. talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education. That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terrorism and winning the war of ideas. Obama is certainly wrong about Bush’s strategy. But note that excising all terms referring to Islamic terrorism and jihad will accomplish Obama’s goal of de-demonizing Islam, terrorism, and jihad, as though doing so will render them non-existent and therefore unrelated to national security. This is putting on the proverbial rose-colored glasses, but a pair that can filter out the guns, bombs, 9/11, Iran’s nuclear fuel program, and Islam’s decades-old war against the West. He doesn’t wish these things to have any substance. His solution is to banish any terms that serve as referents to them. Is this indicative of a hostility towards his own country, of a desire to see it vanquished by Islamists? Yes, because he would not banish the terms if he did not concede, in some dark corner of his consciousness, that their referents existed. He would rather paste a smiley face on the head of a cobra. And if the cobra strikes Americans again, it will be their fault for antagonizing it. Another example of Obama’s mockery of words that mean something -- and not just anything -- was reported in the Washington Examiner. Wading into criticisms from the press that reported his declining poll numbers and that the country is “divided” on ObamaCare, he went stand-up comic: "Can you imagine if some of these reporters were working on a farm?" Obama asked. "You planted some seeds, and they came out the next day, and they looked, and nothing’s happened! (Laughter and applause.) There’s no crop! We’re going to starve! Oh, no! (Applause.) It’s a disaster! (Laughter.)" Reality will have the last laugh. The economic consequences of the legislation he signed into law will be catastrophic. He knows it, as well as do Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, and every politician who voted for it. Yet, it may seem odd that he is still campaigning for it. That is because he must overcome Americans’ loyalty to reality. In another twisting of words, Obama claimed that without “reforming” health care, “this country was going to go bankrupt.” But, isn’t it already? What are trillion dollar government debts, with no way to even service the debt except to confiscate more lives and wealth, but a sign of bankruptcy? He must have had a sneak peek at the Director of the Congressional Budget Office’s blog notice that: Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run. But Obama is claiming that astronomical federal spending programs on ObamaCare and everything else would make the federal budget sustainable. Is this mere pragmatism, or evidence for a contempt for the truth? Harry Smith of CBS spent some time with Obama at the White House, and asked him what he thought of what was being said about him. "I’ve been listening to talk radio, the kindest of terms is a socialist, worst of which I’ve heard is you called a Nazi, are you aware of the level of enmity that crosses the airwaves about you?" asked Smith. "Well I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's pretty apparent, but keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out," said Obama. "It happens often when you've got an economy that is making people more anxious, but that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think vast majority of Americans know that we're trying hard. I want what's best for the country. They may disagree on certain policy issues but I didn't buy all the hype right after inauguration where everybody was only saying nice things about me and I don't get too worried when things aren't going as well because I know that, over time, these things turn. It may be comforting to know that at least Harry Smith listens to the enemy, but one must question his stock of political knowledge; even a National Socialist would wonder why he makes a distinction between the terms socialist and Nazi; because a Nazi is a socialist and a socialist is a Nazi, for after all, it‘s just a matter of the nature and scope of government controls. He then prompts Obama to agree about the “level of enmity that crosses the airwaves” about the President, the key term being enmity. Not about disagreement, or opposition, or even stance, either of which might have elicited a different response from Obama. Smith acted as Obama’s walking, talking teleprompter. Obama’s first sentence falls in line with Smith’s prompting. He complements enmity with “this kind of vitriol,” charging popular talk show hosts Limbaugh and Beck with inflammatory, violence-inciting speech, but, more importantly, insinuating, as many liberal pundits and politicians have, that such speech naturally triggers violence. Such speech “happens often when you’ve got an economy that is making people more anxious.” So, it’s nothing important, anxiety about the future of the country, Americans worried about the future of their freedom and livelihoods, that’s all just a knee-jerk response to the prospect of more taxes, controls and regulations, all the destruction that seems to be ahead of them because of Obama’s and his predecessors’ economic policies -- that’s to be expected. Obama may as well have suggested that Americans take a sedative and stop making so much noise. Oblivious or indifferent to polls conducted by friendly and opposition pollsters alike, Obama then claims that it’s just a minority of Americans making all the noise, they’re just the wingnuts and the lunatic fringe, they can be dismissed, because other Americans understand that he’s “trying hard.” “I want what’s best for the country.” Which is what? What he promised during his campaign and has promised while in office all the while, in sugary, not so hard to decipher rhetoric, a command economy that is essentially socialistic with fascist trappings. “They may disagree on certain policy issues” -- but not on his whole agenda? Not on his push to force Americans to buy insurance, or to enslave the medical profession, or to take over one-sixth of the economy, or to usurp the Constitution and toss it into an Orwellian memory hole?. Pish! Stuff and nonsense! Mere details! A moment later Obama remarks: “I do think that everybody has a responsibility -- Democrats or Republicans -- to tone down some of this rhetoric, some of these comments” -- or else what? What is it about the “tone” that bothers him and his Democratic allies? And why is it that Democrats can exhibit “tone,” but not their opponents, lest they be accused of “hatefulness”? Hate is an emotional response to something one fears. One of its contributing emotions is anger. And what is it that his critics and enemies are angry about? Why would Obama believe that such hatefulness and anger are undeserved -- unless he believed that he was committing treason, but that it was okay, because others were complicit in the treason, so it couldn’t be a crime, it‘s just politics, it‘s just “community organizing.” It is only the “tone” he hears, not the ideational content of that tone. That, he refuses to acknowledge; his self-induced insulation protects him from it. So, who is it that is also imbued with hatefulness and anger, and whose actions precipitated deserved reciprocation? Being hateful and angry about political policies that are asphyxiating freedom, as The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson sneers, is not “political maturity.” Grow up, Americans. This is a democracy, not a republic that ensures the protection of rights against majorities or minorities, against a real or imaginary “will of the people.” Take your medicine and stop complaining. George Orwell, in an essay appended to his dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, remarks that: Prerevolutionary literature could only be subjected [by government lexicographers] to ideological translation -- that is, alteration in sense as well as language. Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government. It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson’s words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government. And it is absolute government that Obama and Congress are promoting, enacting, and imposing on what is left of the American republic -- but calling it a paradise of “social justice.” And saying that it is a “social crime” to think otherwise. Beneath the patina of Obama’s words as weapons and the excelsior of his mockery lies a leaden malice that dares not show its face -- for his country, for Americans, for reason. *“The Principles of Newspeak“ in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism, 1963. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1982 edition), pp. 204-205. Cross-posted from Metablog

As if to underscore the Democrats’ complete indifference to the political and economic consequences of ObamaCare, now or four years from now, and the “offensive” they are launching against anyone who resists or criticizes Obama or anything to do with him, Alan Grayson, a Florida Democratic representative, is filing a “complaint” against a Florida doctor, Dr. Jack Cassell, a urologist, who affixed a notice on his office door that read: “If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.” Cassell’s is the kind of fight-back we should hope to see and expect of medical professionals of all suasions. After all, ObamaCare not only abridges or denies Americans their right to choose to buy health insurance or not, whether or not they want it or need it, but, in our semi-socialized medical establishment, expects those professionals to take cuts in income and abide by byzantine bureaucratic rules. It expects them to submit their patients to a welter of bureaucratic advisory boards which will determine the “justice” of medical costs and whether or not treatment is even “justified.” ObamaCare turns both doctors and patients into wards and slaves of the state. A single constituent of Grayson’s complained about the sign to the representative, who will officially complain to the Florida Department of Health. His argument will be that the doctor is in ethical violation of the Hippocratic Oath. But, which version of that Oath will Grayson base his complaint on? Surprise, Mr. Grayson: There is nothing in either the classic or modern version of it that commits a doctor to working for free, or to forbidding him to refuse a patient, regardless of his race, gender, religion, ethnic origin, ailment, or even politics. In the modern version, the closest the Oath comes to altruism is: I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm. Nothing in that sentence suggests that any doctor turn himself into a compliant, indentured serf. What are those “special obligations,” and how would they differ from the obligations of a businessman to honor his contracts? Nothing is itemized. If a doctor wishes to work for free among the poor, at his own cost, that is his choice. ObamaCare, however, robs him of that choice. An altruist interpretation might be inferred in the sentence, but would hardly be grounds for claiming it is a commitment to servitude. Being a “member of society” is not an automatic sentence to servitude or slavery. As Fox News reports, not even the Florida Department of Health claims that Cassell’s sign violates professional ethics or is in conflict with a statute. “Because there is no statute, there would be no grounds for a complaint,” said Eulinda Smith of the Department. “It would be legally deficient.” It would be “legally deficient,” not to mention unconstitutional, if there were a statute that denied any doctor his freedom of speech. Such a statutory gag would not permit a doctor to defend himself proactively (as in the urologist’s case) or in defense of himself in any circumstances governed by his relationship with real or potential patients. In short, Grayson is grasping for straws that aren’t even there. But, that never stopped a politician from asserting they were there. Such hubris on the part of politicians and collectivists is the foundation of our rights-abridging and wealth-consuming welfare state. Dr. Jack Cassell should be commended for his stand. Anyone who values the First Amendment should rally to his defense and support him. No, no, chirped William Allen, a specialist in bioethics, law and medical professionalism at the University of Florida. Allen felt generous and said that Cassell can say what he wants as long as he doesn’t question patients about their politics or turn them away if he or the patient don’t agree on politics. Allen’s implied public position is that doctors are under strict obligation to accept anyone as a patient. Which is not true. No statute compels a doctor to accept or treat anyone -- except perhaps in countries with socialized medicine. Because Cassell has not turned away the few who voted for Obama -- although it would be within his rights to, he probably suspects that the government and even the AMA would come down on him like a ton of bricks if he did refuse anyone -- Allen quips that the doctor is “trying to hold onto the nub of his ethical obligation. But this is pushing the limit.” And, what “ethical obligation” is Allen referring to? There’s nothing in the Hippocratic Oath that describes or expresses it in the context of a doctor/patient relationship. It is as vague and ambiguous as the commerce and general welfare clauses in the Constitution. At least, those clauses meant something specific to the Founders, if not to the Supreme Court and other legal authorities who have rendered them vague and ambiguous over the decades -- purported adumbrations on which the Democrats are justifying taking over one-sixth of the economy through ObamaCare. What is that “limit,” other than a doctor exercising his freedom of speech? In a collectivized society -- such as Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, wish to establish in America -- if a doctor is denied ownership of own his mind and body, and of the skills he studied for years to acquire, and is prohibited from making any choice in how he uses them, then his freedom of speech is irrelevant and so secondary it disappears from sight. Allen’s warning is: Don’t put into practice what you say, Dr. Cassell, or you’ll be sorry. Just shut up and obey. Grayson and Allen are harpies of a feather in a numerous flock of unsavory creatures who wish to persuade Americans that they have a “right” to medical care. Well, no one has a “right” to medical care, just as no one has a “right” to health insurance, or to a job, or to a home, or to a good sex life. Neither Grayson nor Allen has a leg to stand on. All they can do is express their malice for anyone who refuses to become a slave, or for anyone who speaks out against the prospect of becoming one. Thomas Jefferson noted: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” I would amend that to read: “When injustice becomes law, resistance is a right.” And, in the context of our present predicament, he noted, two years before composing the Declaration of Independence, in A Summery View of the Rights of British America: Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder as involved us, before another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, began at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably…too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. ObamaCare is merely the latest episode of that concerted and deliberate reduction. It didn’t start with President Barack Obama, but, if enough Americans stand up with and in emulation of Dr. Jack Cassell, it may end with Obama. Long Live Lady Liberty! Cross-posted from Metablog

In the midst of composing and posting “A Call to Arms,” I left one remark of mine unclarified regarding the president’s veto powers. It was clear in my head, but not in my words. What I meant to say was that the president can veto even repeal legislation, but his veto can be overridden if two-thirds of the House and Senate so vote. In Obama’s instance, he would work to ensure that no such bill to repeal (for example, ObamaCare) ever got out of committee in either chamber and made its way to formal debate or to a roll call vote. Also, I have added a link to that section of the Constitution, Article 1, Section 7, which discusses presidential veto powers. And I have added in italics a clarifying sentence to this paragraph: The president can veto any repeal of Obamacare, but Congress, if it has the votes, can override his veto with a two thirds majority in each house. This is a check on executive powers anticipated by the authors of the Constitution, one intended to forestall executive despotism. That is, he can veto a repeal bill but expect or risk his veto being overridden by a majority in Congress. My apologies for the confusion. Cross-posted from Metablog

In the midst of composing and posting “A Call to Arms,” I left one remark of mine unclarified regarding the president’s veto powers. It was clear in my head, but not in my words. What I meant to say was that the president can veto even repeal legislation, but his veto can be overridden if two-thirds of the House and Senate so vote. In Obama’s instance, he would work to ensure that no such bill to repeal (for example, ObamaCare) ever got out of committee in either chamber and made its way to formal debate or to a roll call vote. Also, I have added a link to that section of the Constitution, Article 1, Section 7, which discusses presidential veto powers. And I have added in italics a clarifying sentence to this paragraph: The president can veto any repeal of Obamacare, but Congress, if it has the votes, can override his veto with a two thirds majority in each house. This is a check on executive powers anticipated by the authors of the Constitution, one intended to forestall executive despotism. That is, he can veto a repeal bill but expect or risk his veto being overridden by a majority in Congress. My apologies for the confusion. Cross-posted from Metablog

There are three armed and activated surface-to-air, heat-seeking political missiles ready to launch, and one in reserve, armed but not yet activated. The target? ObamaCare, better known to its authors as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (HR 3590), passed by the House on March 21, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23. After it is “reconciled” with the Senate version, it will be just more of the same. ObamaCare not only is a usurpation of the Constitution -- that document has been adulterated before, which is why the advocates of national health care or socialized medicine have been so confident that HR 3590 would pass and not be seriously questioned by the courts -- and a deliberate discarding of the enumerated powers of the legislative and executive branches of government. It is a law that consciously, with malice aforethought, abrogates the individual rights of Americans ensured by that document. It does not merely abridge those rights; it renders them null and void. With the strokes of twenty-two souvenir pens, President Barack Obama enlisted Americans into an involuntary army of indentured serfs, to perform services of submission at their own cost. The costs will be astronomical, the laughable explanations and assurances of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid, and others to the contrary notwithstanding -- making them liars. Its numbers are not only suspect, but outright fraudulent. Honest economists and observers have taken the trouble to crunch those numbers and expose the fraud, deceit and criminal legerdemain. The fiscal fraud is only one aspect of legislation loaded with many unsavory elements, such as the creation of a paramilitary “civilian army” commanded by the White House, and the drafting of doctors, even retired ones, into a “ready reserve” to combat emergencies. ObamaCare will not reduce the federal deficit or save anyone money. Any money saved -- projected at about $140 billion, out of a projected $13 trillion -- will be eaten up by rising costs and inflation. It raids other “entitlement” programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, to make the legislation palatable. ObamaCare is a prescription for catastrophe, a shiny bottle of pills featuring a smile button pasted over a skull and crossbones. Robert J. Samuelson, for example, crunched the numbers and wrote an excellent critique of the legislation in the Washington Post. Commenting on the ongoing government debt, he stated: Let's be clear. A "budget crisis" is not some minor accounting exercise. It's a wrenching political, social and economic upheaval. And that is exactly what Obama and his co-conspirators want, the better to transform the United States into a giant slave camp. The enemy missile, unless it is brought down, will deliver a kind of economic and political electromagnetic pulse, calculated to bring everything and everyone to a standstill. So, it is not an issue of Obama and his gang not knowing mathematics. They know the math; they are subversives in office and by appointment. The witnesses to this act of treason chortled, smiled, applauded, laughed and hugged each other in triumph. There was gaffe-happy, not-quite-all-there Vice President Joe Biden, looking fatherly with his hands on the shoulders of some kid who “campaigned“ for ObamaCare. There was scandal-forgiven-by-Pelosi Charles Rangel. There was Victoria Reggie Kennedy, widow of the late and also scandal-ridden Edward Kennedy of Chappaquiddick fame. There was the prissy, porcine face of Henry Waxman. There was Reid, Bernard Madoff’s alter ego in the Senate. And, there was Speaker Nancy Pelosi, beaming malevolently like the Nurse Ratched she is. "Health care is no longer a promise, it is the law of the land," Obama exulted . And gaffe-happy Biden whispered in Obama’s ear for all the world to hear: "You did it. It's a big f---ing deal." A cast of hundreds witnessed the act, all 219 Democrats who voted for the bill. It would be impossible to write a satire of the event, when so many of the accomplices and abettors are already caricatures of evil. Life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness? Gone with the wind. Life? According to ObamaCare, your life belongs to the state, which will decide whether or not it is worth preserving. Liberty? Whatever the state permits you to do. Property? You are merely a steward of wealth and material goods, until it is clamed by the state. The pursuit of happiness? The state will decide what constitutes happiness, and your pursuit of it will be monitored and regulated. In short, the state owns you. Unless Americans can reclaim their lives. And if they want to, they had better hurry. They should heed the words of their friends and enemies. On the totalitarian ingredients of ObamaCare, the Tenth Amendment Center wisely quoted two figures at opposite ends of the political spectrum: “Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism” and “The goal of socialism is communism.” -- Vladimir Lenin “Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” -- Thomas Jefferson Our first missile might be effective, and this is a heavily qualified might. Several states have passed resolutions or plan to invoke the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. That retaliation might fly, if it is also buttressed by citing the Ninth Amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people . These resolutions and states’ invocations are intended to nullify the compulsory elements in ObamaCare, and will rely on interpretations of the commerce clause, or Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, which states that Congress is empowered: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes …. My readings of the Founders’ meaning of that clause is that it was intended to empower the federal government to establish uniformity in commercial law, to nullify brigandish, fiat state laws that might violate the rights of American citizens engaged in commerce. The monkey wrench in this approach, regardless of the motives of state governors and attorneys general, is the issue of taxing and regulating authority. As I noted in “Murder, She Wrote”: A state's well-intended protection of its citizens against federal taxing power, after all, will be seen as virtual secession. The states would, explicitly or implicitly, be challenging the federal government’s power to tax, as stated in the 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. A challenge to the mandated purchase of government-approved health insurance must logically and necessarily challenge that taxing power. Non-compliance by an individual in any state would result in a penalty tax. A state might ensure an individual’s right to not buy the insurance, but would be helpless to prevent that individual from being punished by the federal government. Such resolutions and acts by the states would be as weather vanes blowing in the wind. So, it is the taxing authority of the federal government that must also be challenged. That event would be earth-shaking, for it would threaten all of the federal government’s powers to regulate and tax commerce and individuals (as well as the states’, counties‘, and municipalities’ own taxing powers). Where do federal powers end, and state powers begin? The Constitution is quite clear on where. The specter of secession is no little matter. The states might succeed in upholding their sovereignty, but be required to see their citizens or residents submit to federal sovereignty (chiefly its taxing authority). It would be tantamount to Americans being taxed by Canada or Britain to subsidize the national health care systems in those countries. One issue the states will need to face or evade is their own power to regulate insurance companies. They cannot credibly challenge the federal power to tax and regulate without questioning their own. But, the Democrats have demonstrated fathomless contempt for the Constitution, and for individual rights (provided they’ve even heard of them), they have denied and disparaged those rights, and the rule of law, and even Congress’s own protocols and rules. That contempt is best summed up in the immortal words of House member Alcee Hastings: When the deal goes down…all this talk about rules…we just make ‘em up, as we go along. Most state lawsuits against ObamaCare are fueling up at the wrong gas stations. These lawsuits, while many cite the unconstitutionality of the legislation, center their arguments on irrelevancies, such the funding of abortions, and plans to include non-tax-paying illegal immigrants in the raft of alleged benefits of compulsory health insurance. One lawsuit, filed privately by Conservative attorney Larry Klayman, is demanding that the administration release documents recording the “wheeling and dealing” behind closed doors with the pharmaceutical industry and other lobbyists over the bill’s contents. Klayman’s suit refers to reports of meetings between administration officials on the "Health Reform De Facto Advisory Committee" and lobbyists representing the pharmaceutical industry, Planned Parenthood, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, AARP and others….Klayman said the advisory committee has been tasked to design a policy that “is intended, at its endpoint, to socialize the American health care system. Klayman is right about the endpoint. But the information he is seeking, while potentially, incriminating and sensational, is basically circumstantial to what should be the principal object of his suit: that ObamaCare violates individual rights, and should be repealed. Other lawsuits contend that the compulsory provisions in the legislation are unconstitutional because the commerce clause prohibits the federal government from compelling Americans to engage in any commerce (whether within states or over state lines), which mandatory commerce is then federally required and regulated. Other arguments will assert that legislating health care or health insurance is not one of the enumerated powers, and, because it is absent, is therefore unconstitutional. Which leads us to the third missile battery: repeal of ObamaCare. This is probably the most credible idea for striking down the legislation. If passed, Obama would be powerless to stop it. Repeal would be introduced as a special bill to be voted on by both Houses, but it would not be one loaded with line items and special earmarks. However, Republicans who advocate changing the provisions, while they may argue against the "public option" compulsory element of the law, will probably settle -- if it comes to that -- for reducing some of the provisions but not make any headway against the public option. It is the public option, after all, that is the driving force of it. And if, miracle of miracles, the Republicans actually take up the cudgels and use them unsparingly against the Democrats over the public option, Obama would not be able to veto the repeal. A bill to repeal is not the same thing as a bill loaded with pork or set-asides and the like. The danger is that, even if the repeal movement reached that point, the Democrats could change the rules, and allow Obama to repeal it if they could not defeat it in the House and Senate. That may take a Constitutional amendment, however. The president can veto legislation passed on to him by the Congress, but he cannot veto a Congressional repeal of legislation, whether or not he or a predecessor signed it into law. This is a check on executive powers anticipated by the authors of the Constitution, one intended to forestall executive despotism. In the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution gives the president the power to veto any bill passed by Congress. The president's veto power is limited; it may not be used to oppose constitutional amendments, and it may be overridden by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. In practice, the veto is used rarely by the president (although Franklin D. Roosevelt vetoed over 600 bills), and a bill once vetoed is rarely re-approved in the same form by Congress. The pocket veto is based on the constitutional provision that a bill fails to go into operation if it is unsigned by the president and Congress goes out of session within ten days of its passage; the president may effectively veto such a bill by ignoring it. But you never know what the Democrats have planned. Their malice and power-lusting are as deep as the Mariana Trench. They mean to rule. What has happened now is that the executive and legislative branches of the federal government have established a shared form of despotism. This has happened in the past -- with FDR and Congress in the 1930’s passing social and economic legislation that established the welfare state, for example -- but Obama and Congress have raised the practice to a new and perilous level. They have simply dismissed the Constitution (recall Obama’s derogatory remarks about that document, and Pelosi‘s “Are you serious?” answer to a reporter about the power of Congress to pass such legislation) and trumped it on the basis of "national need." A bill to repeal would be so singular that it would stand by itself and not be packaged with other pieces of legislation. A repeal is not the same thing as a legislative bill that the executive had the power to oppose or endorse within the limits of his office. It is a rebuke and a nullification. The only way Obama could fight against repeal is to do what he did with the Senate and the House -- glad-hand, strong-arm, and lobby behind closed doors to line up allies and aisle-crossers in both chambers. This is what he did, with Reid’s and Pelosi’s eager cooperation, to get ObamaCare passed in some form. But we should not count on Republicans to advocate a clean decapitation. Some are talking about repealing the “harsher” provisions of the law -- as though one could pick and choose critical elements of tyranny and servitude. Others are advocating scrapping ObamaCare and “starting over again” with an overhaul of health insurance and medical care -- as though the federal government had an enumerated power to enter as an arbiter and regulator of insurance and health care. The fourth missile battery will be activated only after all the others have failed, and, according to experts, such as former judge, author, and judicial analyst Andrew P. Napolitano, we would need to wait until January 1, 2014. That is when the legislation goes into full force, and that is when any challenge, private or state, could be filed with any hope of making it to the Supreme Court. Then, it may be years before the Court could hear a case charging the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare. It is a certainty that Obama et al. know this. Chances are that such a case will be made on non-essentials, and not on fundamental issues. Chances are that the Court (and lower federal courts) by then will be “packed” with justices who subscribe to Obama’s notion of a “living Constitution,” one whose meaning can be interpreted to mean anything but an absolute. Napolitano is not of that school. He warns: Until then, there would be no legal case that individuals had been actually harmed by the law. Moreover, Napolitano says it takes an average of four years for a case to work its way through the various federal courts the final hearing that's expected to come before the Supreme Court. "You're talking about 2018, which is eight years from now, before it is likely the Supreme Court will hear this," he says. Napolitano is an absolutist, in the sense that the words penned by the Founders have eternal, unalterable meanings. He notes: “The Congress [is] ordering human beings to purchase something that they might not want, might not need, might not be able to afford, and might not want -- that's never happened in our history before," Napolitano says. "My gut tells me that too is unconstitutional, because the Congress doesn't have that kind of power under the Constitution." The Constitution, he emphasizes, “…was not created in order to right every wrong. It exists only to legislate in the 17 specific, discrete, unique areas where the Constitution has given it power. All other areas of human area [sic -- action?] are reserved for the states." According to Obama and Congress, however, if the Constitution does not specifically prohibit Congress from intervening in any specific realm of the private sector or in individual lives or state powers of regulation (which Napolitano mentions but does not question), then Congress will intervene. If promoting and regulating health care was not part of a hypothetical, endless catalogue of things Congress may not intrude on, then it is permitted to intrude. The President's plan, far from being constitutionally questionable, rests on what has rightly been called "the first of the constitutional achievements of the American people ... the formation of a national government that may lawfully deal with all national needs. Who said that? Attorney General Holder? Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor? David Axelrod? Cass Sunstein? No. It was a memorandum to Attorney General Janet Reno in 1993, endorsing the constitutionality of President Bill Clinton’s (or Hillary’s) proposed national health care plan, co-authored by two Duke University Law School professors, Walter Dellinger and H. Jefferson Powell. Stuff and nonsense, they wrote. The Constitution was written by a bunch of fussy old fogies in funny clothes and who spoke in odd patterns of speech. The most fundamental constitutional challenge to national health care reform is that it lies beyond the power of Congress and the President to enact. Fortunately, the Supreme Court has long since rejected the crabbed view of national legislative authority that necessarily lies behind such a challenge. Let us ignore challenges based on fundamentals, by all means. Never mind that health care legislation lies “beyond the power of Congress and the President to enact.” We need “reform.” Need trumps reason, rights, and the rule of law. That is the chant we have been hearing for two years now, ever since Obama ran for office. We can only hope that one of these missiles blasts ObamaCare out of the sky, or that Americans rise up and demand that it be negatived. The latter would necessitate mass civil disobedience, of going on strike against not just the government, but against the altruist morality and collectivist politics that sired ObamaCare and whatever else Obama and his allies plan to do to the country. The alternatives are slavery -- or secession, civil war, anarchy, and an excuse for Obama or his successor to impose a dictatorship. Cross-posted from Metablog

The avalanche of news and pending developments has compelled me to take a “shotgun” approach to the issues. The Sands of Iwo Jima, according to Tom Hanks Actor/Producer Tom Hanks made some unconventional, controversial remarks about the Pacific campaign during World War II. He more or less claimed that the conflict between American and Japanese forces was motivated by racism, not by ideas. Let me rephrase that: It was more a matter of American racism than it was stopping Imperial Japan’s version of Nazi’s Germany’s Lebensraum, a policy that could just as well have included the annexation of the West Coast if the U.S. had not recovered from Pearl Harbor. “ Back in World War II,” he says, “we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” One really is at a loss to task Hanks on this matter. He is a fine actor and heir to the mantle of also gregarious actor Jimmy Stewart (who actually piloted bombers over Germany). One is reluctant to slap his face silly, saying, “Wake up and smell the history!” but instead put a encouraging hand on his shoulder and say, “Read a few more books, son, before you make a fool of yourself.” But he did speak the words, and must take the slapping. True, the Japanese were out to kill us. Just as they were out to kill the Chinese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the Burmese, the Indians and any Europeans who were unlucky enough to be in the way of the Japanese march to “co-prosperity” at the point of a gun. Aside from race, just how “different” was our “way of living” from the Japanese “way of living”? Even with its nascent welfare state, America was still a relatively free country. Shinto and emperor worship, allied with bushido-driven fascist militarism, governed Japan. Also, the hubris of racial superiority. True, many American soldiers went to war as racists. Much of the war propaganda was themed on race. But while Japanese war and political policy was racially motivated, American war and political policy was not. Its policy was: Defeat the aggressor. There was no trace of “moral equivalence” in those days. Victor David Hanson noted in his fine article, “Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?”: Despite Hanks’ efforts at moral equivalence in making the U.S. and Japan kindred in their hatreds, America was attacked first, and its democratic system was both antithetical to the Japan of 1941, and capable of continual moral evolution in a way impossible under Gen. Tojo and his cadre. Was our military out to “annihilate” the Japanese? No, not as a race, not even as a culture. Just its rank-and-file soldiers, who were indoctrinated to fight to the death in the realm of physical force. They owed their lives to the emperor, to their ancestors, and to die was to honor them. For our forces, it was a matter of killing them, or being killed by them. The stories of the suicidal combat and behavior of the Japanese brought back by soldiers, seamen, and Marines who fought them are legion. So, it makes one wonder what interpretation Hanks would put on the European campaign. Was that fought from racist motives? He would be hard put to make such an argument, unless he claimed that “we” just didn’t like their cuisine, beer-drinking habits, folk-dances, and guys in funny uniforms who shouted speeches in a guttural language to mass rallies of true believers. And, what did Hanks mean by “Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” Frankly, no, it isn’t familiar with anything that’s going on today. It is difficult to construe any meaning in this statement, unless he was referring to Islam’s ongoing war against the West, or perhaps to Iraq and Afghanistan, or to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He did not qualify or clarify his remark. Neither did he shed any light on his meaning during an interview. He didn’t back-pedal. He stuck to his original remark and said that “America overcoming racism is taking an awfully long time.” Really? America boasts a black president, blacks on the Supreme Court, blacks in Congress, senior officers in the military, intellectuals and writers of many races, doctors, scientists, Japanese and Indian financiers, innovators, CEO’s…have I left anyone out? Perhaps Muslims and Patagonians. Bill Gates’ “Final Solution” One would think that Bill Gates, preeminent apologizer for his success and wealth, would know better than to jump on the anthropogenic global-warming wagon and say foolish things. But, he believes in it. And not only does he believe in it, he has a solution. During this year’s “Technology, Entertainment, Design” (TED) conference, he discussed the absolute necessity of reducing CO2 emissions to zero percent. His talk omitted any reference to the Climategate scandal surrounding the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (and, as accomplices, NASA, NOAA, and sundry battalions of government-funded climatologists the world over), whose computers were diddled with and rigged and arm-twisted to produce the right politically-correct data and scary models. In his talk, Gates seemed to be oblivious to the headlines about the data-dumping conspiracy, a strange thing for a man to be whose career was devoted to creating computer software. Addressing methods to reduce carbon emissions to zero, he suggested that, “if we do a good job on new vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health services we could lower that [carbon emissions] by 10-15%.” Did he forget that everyone in the audience, and he himself, was exhaling CO2? As was everyone else on the planet? Including all the inhabitants of the sink-holes he’s pouring his wealth into? All right. We’ll cut him some slack here. We’ll assume that he actually meant cutting CO2 emissions to zero by setting aside the human race’s own emissions and not including them in his equations. Then what? If the zero point is to be maintained, it means that we will all just sit around twiddling our thumbs until we drop dead from starvation (growing food entails producing those greenhouse gases), freeze to death or collapse from heat stroke (from seasonal climate changes), or begin to murder and cannibalize each other until a population number acceptable to Gates and his worry-warts is reached. Call that number a “critical mass.” But, no one need starve to death or endure a slow death at the hands of nature. Bill will help to reduce the population with new vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive health services -- all necessarily administered by the state, although he doesn’t allude to that. His chosen panel of experts will decide who is to reproduce, and who isn’t, who is to receive medical care (when available), and who isn‘t. And if you are not lucky enough to be deemed an asset to the state, would you be so kind as to drop dead? We really wouldn’t want to resort to force, when things could become ugly. Bill Gates either means what he says -- or he should stop to think before speaking. But, he hasn’t clarified his remarks, either, so we must assume he means what he says. Those “Deeming” Democrats, or, The “Slaughter” on East Capitol Street Speaking of “deeming,” Nancy Pelosi has a solution to voting for the health care bill this week: Don’t vote for it! That is, forgo the whole roll call business in the House and just "deem" the bill passed. That is, not vote on the equally horrendous Senate version of the bill. Then send the House version without amendments to the White House for certain signature. An excellent way to bypass all those troublesome socialist health care "deniers." The "Slaughter" here is House Rules Chairman Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), who CongressDaily reported Wednesday is "prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill." She is reportedly considering putting forth a rule that would dictate that the Senate version of the bill is automatically passed through the chamber once the House passes a corrections bill making changes to it. This is the same Louise Slaughter of “her dead sister’s false teeth” fame I mentioned in a previous post, when she participated in the bogus “bipartisan” conference of fading memory. But, rather than belabor the obvious evil of any health care bill, there is an aspect of this enervating sordidness that has been overlooked, or not completely grasped. You look at the grunge who are running and ruining this country -- from the White House to Congress and all the way down to the mail room staff at the IRS or FDA or any federal agency or department you care to name -- and you must ask yourself: What moves them? What are they counting on? I can do no better than include here a remark I made in an email to a friend on the character and behavior of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Just read your comments here, and it caused me to grasp the horrible motive behind especially Pelosi's actions, statements and arrogance: She can't help but realize that if her "beloved" health care passes -- without or without a vote, with a roll call or with just a "deeming" -- she will be voted out of office. I am certain that she doesn't care if the Democrats suffer a massacre in November, and that she is willing to sacrifice her own political career to get this bill passed. She and Reid and Obama and Hoyer and the rest were willing to throw other Democrats under the bus. What can you say about someone who, driven by an obvious, naked malice for freedom and a demonstrable contempt for Americans and this country (remember her "Are you kidding?" reply to the reporter who asked if health care was enumerated in the Constitution?), is willing to help destroy this country, even if it means sacrificing herself? She has not only thrown some of her recalcitrant supporters under the bus, she herself has rolled under it. There is the proof of the pudding -- the precise, unsweetened, undisguised character of altruism and self-sacrifice in action. She is the distaff James Taggart, a principal villain in Ayn Rand‘s Atlas Shrugged. She wants to hear America scream. She wants to laugh and say, “There! It’s law! Deal with it! You’re going to obey me even if it kills you!” Would she care if she learned that tens of thousands of doctors and other medical professionals would quit if the bills passes? No. If millions of Americans engaged in mass civil disobedience and refused to cooperate with or submit to the law’s dictates? No. She will advocate the use of naked force. Obama would approve and give the order. After all, from the first day of his presidential campaign and throughout his administration, he has waged his own jihad against America. He, too, seeks submission. His friends the Islamists don’t have a monopoly on that end. It’s time Americans woke up to that fact. It’s not just about health care. It’s about power. It’s about tyranny. It’s about destroying America. Humpty Dumpty’s Crumbling Global-Warming Wall Not surprisingly, the polar bears, the Amazon rain forests, the glaciers, the snail darters, woodpeckers of all sizes and colors, and spotted owls of yesteryear are doing just fine. They’re not disappearing, or melting, or perishing, or being driven to extinction. Gerald Warner in the London Daily Telegraph, however, focuses on just the polar bears and the rain forests in his unheralded article of March 16th, “Climategate: two more bricks fall out of the IPCC wall of deceit -- rainforests and polar bears.“ He writes, with some humor, after reporting on NASA‘s own findings that a slight decrease of rainfall over the Amazon rain forests did not turn Brazil into a vast Sahara desert: So, the rainforest scare, like the Himalayan glaciers panic, is garbage. A further encouraging feature of this development is that genuine scientists are increasingly becoming emboldened to challenge the IPCC’s junk science: the Academy is beginning to reassert its integrity. AGW [anthropogenic global warming] without withered rainforests is Hamlet without the prince. It was one of those emotive claims much invoked by priggish children in the voice-overs of nanny-state “green” commercials, lecturing their elders on the stewardship of the planet. And all of Al Gore’s disciples, soothsayers and king’s men can’t put it back up again. In the meantime, Hollywood, or one of its suburban branches, insists on producing AGW scare movies. Rob Lyons in a Spiked Online article, “What’s wrong with exploiting nature?” delves into the latest non-block buster, “Dirty Oil,” about how awful it is that oil developers in Alberta, Canada, are despoiling the landscape and altering the bucolic lives of local inhabitants. With greens constantly assuring us that the day of reckoning for ‘peak oil’ is just around the corner, being able to exploit Canada’s oil sands to increase the total world reserves of oil and provide energy security seems a pretty good deal. But Dirty Oil seems uninterested in the wider economic benefits of oil-sands production. Practically my only reservation about Mr. Lyons’ article is that he innocently assumes that the “greens” are truly concerned about oil reserves and everyone‘s well-being. The “greens” would rather everything come to an oil-starved halt and everyone be so good as to take a powder. Israel’s Bronx Cheer to Obama, Clinton, and Biden Finally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu cocked a snook at President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice-President Joe Biden by announcing the continuation of Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem, and on the very day Biden was in Israel to talk him out of it. It left US Vice-President Joe Biden humiliated as he had traveled to the region in the hope of announcing the restart of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Biden, a buffoon, will get over the humiliation. He has the resilience of a rubber mouse pad. Obama and Company would rather not see that construction take place because it would upset the Palestinians. The stateless Palestinians, you see, seem to be a better “client state” and ally to the U.S. than is Israel. The Palestinians do not recognize Israel’s right to exist -- indeed, Israel is missing from the maps Palestinian school books -- while Israel is expected to recognize their right to swamp Israel with its stateless manqués and so destroy it. The land at issue is land Israel won during the 1967 war. Why would Obama and company side with losers? What could they possible gain in their ostensive fantasy of seeing Palestinians mix and mingle peacefully with Israelis in some Hegelian thesis-antithesis apotheosis? Daniel Pipes offers some advice to Obama, Clinton, and other policymaking denizens of the White House: It concerns not a life-and-death issue, such as the menace of Iran's nuclear buildup or Israel's right to defend itself from Hamas predations, but the triviality of the timing of a decision to build new housing units in Israel's capital city. Wiser heads will insist that White House amateurs end this tempest in a teapot and revert to normal relations. That advice is premised on the assumption that Obama and Company care about Iran’s nuclear buildup and Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and the stateless beggars of non-existent Palestine, armed as they are by Hamas and Hezbollah. It presumes that the White House’s amateurs value “normal relations” with Israel. It asks that Obama and his fellow amateurs appreciate that it is a matter of life-and-death for Israel. But, in truth, Obama does not value Israel. He would rather see it compromise and negotiate itself out of existence. Just as he would rather see America submit to socialism. Cross-posted from Metablog

Former Vice-President Al Gore, star of the pseudo-documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which won an Oscar for best documentary feature and garnered him a Nobel Peace Prize shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, continues beating his hockey sticks on the heads of an American public anxious about its future under multi-headed Hydra called Congress. He is determined to revive his Climategate-damaged credibility and salvage all the money he has invested in alternative energy companies -- whose “alternatives” are lower standards of living at higher costs, alternative energy sources dependent on the vagaries of nature (i.e., natural climate change) and the whims of bureaucrats. On February 28, The New York Times carried his dour, straight-faced op-ed, “We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change,” in which he warns that “climate change” is real, notwithstanding that the whole anthropogenic global-warming thesis has been exposed as a politically-motivated conspiracy to foist false science on the world with doctored temperature numbers, hidden or destroyed evidence contrary to the thesis. Phil Jones and his colleagues at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia also ostracized and rebuffed “skeptics” who questioned or challenged the a priori conclusions Jones and his data manipulators wished to be accepted as truth. Gore’s only concession to the scandal is to admit to merely “two mistakes,” but dismisses them as irrelevant. It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law. But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. Mistakes? Fraud and lies are “mistakes”? The first mistake was the acceptance as iron-bound truth that glaciers were melting as reported by a mountain-climbing magazine -- hardly a journal of scientific inquiry. The second “mistake” was climate researchers not wanting to prove their assertions and claims to climate “skeptics” who required such proof. Their willingness to dodge the British freedom of information law indicates an ulterior motive. It was the CRU’s version of taking the Fifth. Poor babies. They were “besieged” by the need to substantiate their claims. But revealing their doctored data would have not only blown their claims out of the water, but exposed them to the charge of being liars, and caused them to be discredited as “scientists.” But the “stolen” emails reveal a multitude of “mistakes,” not least of which were the attempt to squelch dissent and the stonewalling of outside enquiries. The “mistakes” range from Phil Jones asking his accomplices in fraud to delete data being requested under the British Freedom of Information Act to another accomplice expressing his frustration with forcing the data and numbers to cooperate with the predetermined conclusion that global warming was “actual.” Gore’s New York Times byline claims he is a “businessman.” That would be correct if businessmen by definition were scam artists and hucksters. But such a definition would comport with the character of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the CRU -- which have been exposed as dens of thieves and con-artists. Gore is in the right company. It would be interesting to examine several of Gore’s main op-ed points. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. Gore’s reliance on the notion of consensus about global warming is critical to understanding why he continues to believe a lie he has been promoting for a decade. Consensus is nothing more than a number of individuals agreeing that something is true or false. But truth stands apart from human consciousness. It is independent of it. The number of minds that observe it, or call it something else, is irrelevant to its existence. Numbers of minds are not going to change it. As Ayn Rand once succinctly put it, “Fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one.” Yet the vaunted consensus remains “unchanged” despite the beating the thesis has taken from the truth. Gore comes off sounding like a television evangelist claiming that God exists, is all-merciful, and will forgive you your sins if you only obey him. The evangelist’s audience is composed of stunted minds for whom the proofs that God is a metaphysical impossibility would roll off their frontal lobes like water off a duck. It is the same with Gore’s true believers. They must believe, because they refuse to think and accept the evidence of their senses. These are the people, laymen and “scientists” alike, for whom faith is as trustworthy as certainty. So many people believe in anthropogenic global warming (decades ago it was global cooling); who are they to question such an impressive consensus? It must be true. Michael Crichton, A.B. Anthropology at Harvard, commented on the historical role of consensus: Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus... Gore opened his op-ed with: It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it. Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century. Yes, the “attacks” do indicate not only that there is no “unimaginable calamity” in store for the planet and human civilization (unless Iran uses nuclear weapons somewhere), but that they are legitimate critiques of junk science. Those attacks are as legitimate and deserving as exposés of junk economics, junk medicine, junk education, and junk multiculturism. That junkyard is more responsible imperiling human civilization than any amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. And, I do not think Gore would be “relieved” if there were no crisis for him to exploit. His is the archetypical statist mentality that must have a crisis to serve as a platform through which to acquire power. He needs a crisis to justify his existence. He cannot project a single action of his own that would not “influence” others and establish him as a kind of Moses who received the word from God and is ready to lead the unwashed to salvation. What has resorting to “green technologies” to do with national security? National security is the concern of our military and intelligence agencies. Whose environmental and regulatory policies made the U.S. dependent on a global oil market, specifically, a hostage of OPEC, all of whose members are hostile to this country? The federal government’s and those of a succession of administrations. Whose pragmatic foreign policies have made the Mideast the most unstable region of the world? Again, look to Washington. Aside from the hundreds of billions of dollars sent overseas for OPEC oil, we are sending hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to prop up hostile regimes. But, according to Gore’s notion of foreign policy, no regime is so hostile that its “friendship” can’t be bought with foreign aid. What “dwindling reserves” of oil? Studies indicate that the U.S. has more untapped oil off its shores than Saudi Arabia had before the feudalists there “nationalized” American and Western oil fields decades ago -- with our own government‘s sanction. And nowhere in his op-ed does Gore advocate the cleanest “alternative” energy yet invented: nuclear power. Gore wrote: Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Just like computer models that cannot reliably project the weather twenty-four hours from now? These are the bane of meteorologists, in academia and on TV. Or computer models fed biased data to produce the “right” numbers? These are much like rigged slot machines. January was not seen as “unusually cold in much of the United States.” It was unusually cold. It’s winter, Al. Some winters are more severe than others. This has been the case for millions of years. Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept. Note how Gore distinguishes between “climate deniers” and “scientists.” Anyone who disagrees with his assertions and the claims of the warmist tribe cannot be a scientist. He does not mention the hottest decade in recent memory, which was the 1930’s. Nor mention the Medieval Warm Period, something erased from his hockey stick graph and “hidden” in the CRU data. Which “scientists” in a consensus mood have confirmed that the last ten years were the hottest decade? Gore’s link takes one to NASA, implicated in the CRU scandal, and a report that relies on the “findings” of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Throughout his op-ed, Gore blames “political paralysis” on governments not acting collectively to “combat” global warming, especially in Washington, a paralysis “now so painfully evident…has thus far prevented action by the Senate -- not only on climate and energy, but also on health care reform, financial regulatory reform and a host of other pressing issues.” He introduces a term I had not encountered elsewhere, the “atmospheric commons,” an idea whose root is the socialist/feudal status of land slowly abandoned by the enclosure of private property in Britain before the Industrial Revolution. He continually refers to CO2 as a “pollutant,” forgetting that people every day exhale more “pollutants” than all smokestacks and power plants that ever existed. In a perfidious instance of concept subversion, Gore advocates what he and others call a “market-based solution” to combat global warming, cap-and-trade. But government-coerced “solutions” are anything but “market-based,” and are no more that than is Social Security, unemployment legislation, or just plain extortion. It is a deliberate misnomer. What he and his ilk in Washington are advocating is a form of what Ayn Rand, in her novel Atlas Shrugged, described when the purchase and use of Hank Rearden’s new metal were forbidden except by government permission, and the sale and purchase of Taggart railroad bonds were similarly forbidden, both controls spawning black markets, politically connected transactions, and, for the railroad bonds, “a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves ‘defreeezers’ and offered their services ‘to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.’ The boys had friends in Washington.”* As will, in a reality that is emulating the novel, cap-and-trade defreeezers. Gore not only derogates “climate skeptics” and refuses to call them “scientists,” but peevishly lashes out at other critics and doubters of catastrophic climate change. Simultaneously, changes in America’s political system — including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication — conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms. Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment. And as in times past, that has proved to be a potent drug in the veins of the body politic. Their most consistent theme is to label as “socialist” any proposal to reform exploitive behavior in the marketplace. Aside from holding the bizarre notion that newspapers, magazines, and television comprise a part of “America’s political system,” Gore perpetuates the idea that they serve only the “wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets” and help to “weaken advocates of legal and regulatory reforms.” This is Marxism straight-up. The mainstream news media, however, are dominated by editors and news anchors friendly to Gore’s policies and to legal and regulatory reforms. The country’s major newspapers and broadcasting networks indeed act as a “potent drug in the veins of the body politic” -- but to Gore’s advantage, whether he knows it or not. Gore snidely refers to Fox News and popular radio talk show hosts without naming them as “showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment.” No, Al. Americans who watch Fox News or listen to Limbaugh, Hannity and others are not “entertained”; they turn to them because they are tired of listening to the same old liberal pap in the MSM. Being told in no uncertain terms that they are being prepared for involuntary servitude hardly qualifies as amusement. Socialism means fetters and shackles and ration cards and sacrifice and no longer owning your own life. Perhaps the scariest sentence in Gore’s essay is this one: From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption. The “rule of law”? Whose law? Used how and to what end? Gore can only mean redemption at the point of a gun. Pass a law -- cap-and-trade, compulsory health care, the regulation and taxation of carbon emissions, national service -- and employ government force as the instrument to compel obedience and compliance, and human redemption through “governance” is achieved. Gore’s agenda and “counter-attack” against reason and reality fit perfectly into what columnist Mark Steyn has identified as a concerted but insidiously sly campaign by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid and their allies in and out of Congress to establish the “legal” foundation of unbridled socialism in this country through primarily the health care legislation, even if it means sacrificing a Democratic majority to incensed voters next November. Obamacare represents the government annexation of "one-sixth of the U.S. economy" – i.e., the equivalent of the entire British or French economy, or the entire Indian economy twice over. Nobody has ever attempted this level of centralized planning for an advanced society of 300 million people. Even the control-freaks of the European Union have never tried to impose a unitary "comprehensive" health care system from Galway to Greece. The Soviet Union did, of course, and we know how that worked out. Obamacare would be just the beginning, or even arguably, just the continuation, of the absorption of every other facet and aspect of American life, and result in diminishing standards of living, virtual impoverishment, and the claustrophobic sense of living in a prison. The government’s obsession with “health” over the decades has conditioned many Americans to become self-conscious hypochondriacs sensitive to obesity, smoking, diet, nutrition, product safety, and anything else the government funds research to investigate what its otherwise idle “scientists” deem to be problems and crises. The relatively inauspicious hippie-inspired “ecology” movement has certainly come a long way -- unopposed -- and has been spurred by a political agenda from the start. “Earth Day,” April 22, first “celebrated” in 1970, also happens to be Lenin’s birthday. Coincidence, or intention? Ask the late Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, who wrote: The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around. Doubtless, Al Gore would agree. Some columnists ascribe the ravings of Gore about climate change and the concerted campaign by Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their numerous allies in and out of Congress to transform America into a prison of indentured servants to an ignorance of economics coupled with a blindness to history. But I do not believe the paucity of comprehension can be traced to mere illiteracy or to politicians being “slow learners” or conceptually dyslexic. The phenomenon has deeper, darker roots than that. John Chapman of the American Enterprise Institute, for example, offers an incisive comparison between the methods and ends of modern statists and Lenin’s, and remarks: Marx and Lenin were brilliant intellectuals, and Mr. Obama may be as well. But all share a fundamental lack of understanding about how an economy based on the division of labor works, and how trade, sound money, and private property rights all serve to promote peaceful, harmonious social cooperation as evinced by this division of labor. As such, all fail to see how government policy errors can cause economic disasters, such as the 1930s or today's mess -- these leaders, like most members of the political class, fail to apprehend how wealth is created, and how this process is stultified via government interventions. However, I think that Obama, Pelosi, Reid et al. do understand how all that works, and are out to destroy America. Like Al Gore, they claim (in so many obfuscating, rhetorically-sweetened words) to want to "remake" America. But the truth is that they wish to destroy the country for the sake of destroying it. I am confident that they know the consequences of their policies, and that they wish to plunge the country into economic chaos and civil anarchy. The death of America is their sole, unspoken vision, not fashioning a materialistic socialist paradise on earth. Otherwise, why would they keep insisting that "remaking" America would require sacrifices and hardship? Their vision of America is an America on its knees, or, as Ellsworth Toohey put it to Peter Keating in The Fountainhead, “locked, stopped, strapped -- and alive.“ They want Americans to take orders, to accept their wishes as their commands. This, of course, requires a moral judgment of the responsible parties. They can be morally judged by their actions, and their actions speak volumes about their core motivation and ends. They are driven by unadulterated malice for freedom, private property, freedom of speech, and anything else the hallmark of liberty. That malice is what Obama et al. have in common. One can write the most eloquent defense of laissez-faire, free markets, market efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and so on -- but the creatures who inhabit government now do not really care how sound and unanswerable such proofs are. Destruction is their sole aim, and destruction they mean to bring about -- with no goal beyond that, except, perhaps, the sadistic pleasure of seeing vanquished Americans inhabit the desolate ruins of their country. To combat that malice, the battle must be fought on moral terms. Moral judgment is what our would-be czars fear the most. And to fight that battle effectively, the whole altruist/collectivist axis must be refuted in the minds of Americans and discarded. Wishing won’t make Al Gore go away, or see reason. To him and his ilk, truth is not just inconvenient -- it is unwelcome. *Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. 1957. New York: Dutton, 35th Anniversary Edition, 1992, p. 352. Cross-posted from Metablog

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes! Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses, Blow the trumpets, bang the brasses, Tantantara! Tzing, boom! We are the peers of the highest station, Paragons of legislation, Pillars of the British nation. Tantantara, tantara, tantara! Tzing, boom, tzing, boom! Entrance and March of the Peers Gilbert and Sullivan, , 1882 That, more or less, is the heady, arrogant, snarky attitude of most Congressmen, senators and representatives alike -- not to mention that of President Barack Obama -- sans any melody. It has been more like bombastic nattering. It was expressed repeatedly over the last year over the health care bill, the various stimulus packages, most recently the jobs bill, in stubborn, nose-in-the-air defiance of the facts, and of the masses who participated in the tea parties and town halls. It continues today. They consider themselves the elite, the overweening Platonic guardians of the “public good,” the standard bearers of progressivism who will hear no protest, see no reason to argue with mere plebeians, and speak no evil in their campaign to coerce all Americans to comply with their wills and wishes. But, just how “smart” are these pseudo-patricians? Not very. Most of them are career politicians, never having had to run a business or otherwise be responsible for their own lives -- and yet they presume to take responsibility for the lives of millions. If they retire or grow weary of politics, they usually repair to a law firm or academia. They are insulated from the real world of cause and effect. People move and work and generate wealth. The world in which people move, work and generate wealth, is, to them, alien, unfriendly, unattractive, and not a little frightening. It is a world they choose to keep at arm’s length. They can pass legislation ruinous to the average American, and then put the ruined American on the dole -- on which he must pay a tax. But if, by chance, the legislation is recognized (usually by grudging consensus) as disastrous, they do not face the visceral consequences of their actions, or endure the destruction they have wrought. They are indemnified against any and all noxious outcomes. They employ taxpayer revenue to destroy revenue. If, perchance, they find themselves opposed, they fight back with the money extorted from those who oppose them, while those who oppose them must fight back at their own additional time and expense. Old World patricians, or those of a past American age, had class and some presence of mind. By patrician, Thomas Jefferson comes to mind, and James Madison. Even Lincoln, for his humble beginnings, was a patrician of the spoken and written word. What passes for the appellation today? What is the personal, intellectual and moral caliber of those many, many dozens who presume to rule over the masses and tell them what is good for them? Louise Slaughter, D-New York, Chairman of the House Rules Committee, and a busy-body advocate of Obamacare, is one of those “patricians.” The Fox Nation has run a revealing video of Representative Slaughter. She seemed to be auditioning for a gig on Saturday Night Live, lampooning herself by telling the most ludicrous, non-heart-breaking story possible, when she was speaking her turn during the so-called bipartisan summit on the health care bill on February 26. If only she had been engaging in satire. Her spiel provoked guffaws of laughter around the country, unfortunately not heard by President Obama, Slaughter, or anyone else who participated in the alleged summit. She claimed that a denture-deprived constituent’s sister died, and the “poor woman wore her dead sister’s teeth.” Which, of course, she said, would not fit. “Would you ever believe that in America, this is where we would be?” Well, Madame, wait until we have socialized medicine, then you and all your other poor constituents will believe it, and not thank you for it. She must already have disgruntled constituents by the brigade; she refused to hold a town hall or “forum” in which they could question her about health insurance legislation. Her last experience, apparently, during the Clinton years, was too distasteful. And, she can rattle on about COBRA and Medicare and all the other intricacies of our semi-socialized medical establishment with the best of her ilk, in a folksy, coffee klatch and quilting party style that grates on one’s nerves. She offered no explanation of why the constituent was so denture-poor that she would wear anyone’s second-hand teeth. I suppose we are supposed to conclude it was because she had no health insurance. A wad of paper called a health insurance policy, as Slaughter and her fellow Cargo Cultists in Congress must see it, somehow imparts magical fairy dust over the insured, making him automatically healthy and solvent, and wards off medical emergencies such as needing dentures, or miraculously brings the dentures to him. She must be an acolyte of Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, alleged economist. Yes, all those connections make so much sense their logic exists in an ether inaccessible to mere mortals. As she puts it together in her rarified mind, getting the health care bill passed will restore our manufacturing base, recoup our technological edge, and put fresh false teeth into the mouths of every entitlement-obsessed gray panther. The Washington Post ran what could only be called a puff-piece for a latter day Frank Nitti, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, a power-luster wearing transparent knuckle-dusters and whom one can easily imagine using a baseball bat on the head of anyone who crosses him. The article was laden with complimentary quotations from Democrats and anonymous persons too frightened of Emanuel to risk attribution and therefore retribution. In Emanuel one can see the overall moral character of Obama, his staff, his departmental appointees, and those members of Congress whose arms Emanuel has twisted to get them to play ball with Obama‘s socialist agenda -- naked, cynical quests for power in complete contempt for the Constitution, for Americans, for the legislative process. He has always showed a brash side. As a young operative in Illinois, he sent a dead fish to a pollster. As an aide to Bill Clinton, he stabbed a knife into a table while screaming the names of the president's enemies. Obama's key campaign advisers, even those with whom Emanuel has clashed, are as eager as he is to make the civil war of the Chicago consiglieri story go away. Well, that is appropriate behavior of a member of the new Chicago “consiglieri,” which won’t “go away” because Emanuel has the literal mentality of a thug. The “dead fish” gesture was once the message sent by gangsters to someone they planned to murder. Emanuel went to Sarah Lawrence College and received, somewhat incongruously, a Master's Degree in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University. His brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, is the witch doctor to Rahm’s Attila, being a health-policy advisor in the Office of Management and Budget. He has concocted a who-gets-health-care-first-or-never system to be incorporated in Obamacare. Another older brother, Ari Emanuel, is a Hollywood talent agent who has held Democratic fundraisers and represents a stable of dimly lit stars, including left-wing “documentary journalist” Michael Moore. Perfect fit. A pairing better than Emanuel and Obama is Emanuel and David Axelrod. Axelrod, said some jittery, anonymous source worried lest Emanuel have a knife sunk into him, “has a strong view of the historic character Obama is supposed to be.” Which, going by the evidence of Obama’s public demeanor and political agenda, is supposed to be a Marxist Messiah. Emanuel is the pragmatic fixer and speech coach for that “historic character.” Which makes Obama the puppet-king. Watching him during the so-called bipartisan “summit” over health care, one saw the puppet bored, impatient, inarticulate, and worn out having to speak without his teleprompter -- an empty suit unable to conduct himself without the locker-room, obscenity-spiced pep talk of his chief of staff and his collectivist brain brother, Axelrod. No, that aura of Chicago gangster politics isn’t going away any time soon, no matter how low a profile Emanuel keeps. Perhaps we are fortunate that Obama clashes with Emanuel over how best to ram socialism down the throats of Americans. His “over-confidence” may be his undoing. Finally, Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky introduced a quantum of reason in a conflict by blocking a resolution to extend unemployment benefits, defying both Democrats and Republicans. Enough, he said, was enough. Where was all this money supposed to come from? The Washington Post reported his eventual capitulation with the chortling headline, “Days later, as a deal emerges, Bunning backs down.” "If there were ever an emergency, this is it," Reid said. "It's not about the legislative process or Senate rules. It's about the rights of individuals to survive in America. . . . They've gone too far." Bunning said Tuesday night that his efforts had been worthwhile in shedding a spotlight on growing federal deficits. Reid, the consummate spendthrift of other people’s money, is laughably venal. The author of the article, Ben Pershing, however, mentioned several times throughout Bunning’s “impolitic comments,” implying that he was an embarrassing anomaly whose sanity was suspect. A sterling instance of objective journalism. There was more pertinent information about Bunning reported, not by liberal writer Pershing, but by a reader of the article. Reader “Bertielou“ noted: Actually this was not a new position for Bunning. Over the last two years, he has taken unpopular stands against massive, government entitlement expansions. He was the lone dissenter in April 2008 on a massive mortgage boondoggle. He was one of 25 Senators to vote against TARP in October 2008. He voted against the UAW/auto bailout in December 2008. He was one of only 14 fiscally responsible GOP Senators who voted against the $6 billion GIVE/SERVE national service entitlement expansion in March 2009. And he has consistently grilled Fed chairman Ben Bernanke over his spectacularly wrong assessments of the housing bubble and the state of the economy….Bunning is actually a fiscal conservative unlike so many Republicans and "conservative" Democrats who just talk the talk. One of the questions Bunning asked was why the money being allocated for extended unemployment benefits and other payment programs was not taken from the unspent billions of so-called “stimulus” funds, instead of tacking the costs of the extension to the soaring out-of-sight deficit. No one chose to answer him. Democrats piled on him like ravenous wolves, while Bunning’s fellow Republicans turned tail and did not intrude on the mauling. We'll say this about Kentucky's Jim Bunning: No one can accuse him of kowtowing to the polls. This week he has single-handedly blocked his Senate colleagues from extending aid to the unemployed. His "hold" on a $10 billion stopgap spending bill has started a wave of furloughs among federal workers and threatens doctors with a deep cut in their payments under Medicare. President Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs calls Bunning "irrational." Fellow Republicans keep their distance. Democrats can't get enough of his antics, which they hope will feed the perception that Republicans are heartless and none too smart. Perceptions! That is the key to success! Not truth, or responsibility, or concern about the economy, or the ability of the private sector to generate tax revenue. The Republicans would have helped their own stature in the electorate’s eyes by standing behind Bunning. But, they do not want to be “perceived” as closet “tea-baggers.“ Bunning’s forcefully made suggestion, “that the Senate should tap some of the unspent money from last year's stimulus bill to fund the new legislation” was instantly opposed and dismissed with unflattering haste by his fellow peers. Majority leader Harry Reid has rejected that plan, even though — according to the Obama administration's www.recovery.gov website — more than $500 billion in stimulus money is yet to be spent. Harry Reid, of course, together with his allies in the House and the White House, is determined to reduce the private sector to a fraction of its current size, which passage of the health care bill would do. One can fault Bunning only for not grasping this fact and underestimating the malice held by most in the Senate chamber for tradesmen, the middle classes, and Americans in general. But, for five days at least, he was peerless among his peers. One important thing Americans must grasp, if they are to successfully influence this year’s mid-term elections, is that they are being governed and gutted by a nearly self-perpetuating statist oligarchy that looks down its nose at them and does not see itself as accountable for its actions. Another important thing for Americans to grasp is that they must reject the whole welfare state philosophy -- Medicare, Social Security, unemployment benefits, every notion of the unearned, every element of altruism and living and existing for others implemented and expressed in current law -- if they are to “take the country back” from an oligarchy that means to enslave them. Cross-posted from Metablog

I read an interesting Spiked column on the current "offensive" in Afghanistan. The author makes several valid points. He all but says that if the war is fought, not to achieve victory, but to attain some altruistic "hearts and minds" goal, then it is pointless to even wage the war. As the NATO forces prepared to launch their latest doomed offensive to defeat an invisible enemy while winning over hostile hearts and minds, a British lieutenant colonel was quoted as saying, somewhat tactlessly, ‘We are going into the heart of darkness’. Tactlessly? “The heart of darkness” (a reference to Joseph Conrad’s novel, Heart of Darkness) is ultimately not what Mick Hume alludes to, “an occupation without purpose, a dangerous military offensive without goals, a war without causes but plenty of casualties.” Rather, it is to the enveloping, logical darkness of acting from selfless, altruistic motives. In war, as well as in peace, as a nation’s policy or as a personal one, the object of selflessness and altruism is to sacrifice a value for a non-value, to elevate mediocrity as a means of razing shrines. (See Ellsworth Toohey’s speech on the means and ends of altruism wedded to collectivism in Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead, for clarification on that issue.)* It is to seek no gain, not even a national security one. In this instance, it is to elevate ourselves in the eyes of semi-literate brutes and world opinion. If waging the war is a legitimate action (as defeating Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan was), why is a "Just War" (one that conforms to the “Just War” theory) centrally linked with befriending an enemy population not deemed to be legitimate, unless it's waged from altruistic motives? How can one win the "hearts and minds" of a population that is still morally, culturally, and epistemologically in the Dark Ages? And even if the population is somehow "befriended," what is the likely longevity of such an accomplishment? What is to stop it from reverting to type, that is, from regressing to its pre-befriended, culturally stagnant state? One of the major flaws of especially American strategy in Afghanistan is evading the fact that it is not so much the Taliban our military is fighting, but Islam itself. Even if we managed to wipe out the Taliban and al-Quaeda, Islam would remain in the culture. Islam is at its core anti-Western, anti-reason, anti-all pro-life values. For example, what guarantee did we ever have that Iraq would not revert back to some form of Islamic law or a corrupt regime? Well, look at the government there. We expended lives and treasure there -- thousands of lives and billions of dollars -- for what? So that charlatans, non-entities, and mediocrities can vie for power? Yes -- and democratically, too. We believe in “democracy” -- not individual rights -- and if the Iraqis vote themselves a mongrel, semi-secular, semi-religious government, who are we to judge? After all, it was the “will of the people.” Would the same thing happen in Afghanistan? Of course. The only alternative, according to “Just War” strategists, is permanent occupation to ensure “stability.” Favorably explicating General Stanley McChrystal’s current military policy and comparing it with the British experience, Max Boot, of the Council on Foreign Relations, concludes: What Gen. McChrystal realizes, in effect, is that we need to create our own Robert Warburtons. If his experiment succeeds, future commanders can build on the precedent to provide the kind of cultural and linguistic skills that we will need to win the long war against Islamic extremists. What are McChrystal’s objectives? His Harvard thinking shows through here: “The biggest thing is in convincing the Afghan people,” General McChrystal said in Istanbul, where he joined Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to brief NATO allies just before the offensive began. “This is all a war of perceptions,” General McChrystal said. “This is not a physical war in terms of how many people you kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up. This is all in the minds of the participants.” In short, our forces in Afghanistan are commanded by a degree-carrying Kantian. It’s all in your head, you know, what you think “victory” is. War, according to this policy, should be nothing more than armed social work to convert the Patagonians, or the Iraqis, or Afghanis to bring them “stability” and to ourselves self-sacrificing brownie points. However, what is in the minds of the Taliban? The kind of victory erased from the mind of General Stanley McChrystal. Can we blame President Barack Obama for his lukewarm "war strategy," if it can be called a strategy at all? Yes. Although he is more focused on waging war against American liberties, not against any foreign threat, his Afghanistan policy, in fact, is simply an application and extension of his assault on American liberties, which he does not value and has demonstrated he is willing to sacrifice. Pundits have come close to the truth when they refer to Obama’s Mideast and Afghanistan policies as “Bush II.” I would call it a policy “aggressive appeasement,” one which now straddles two administrations. Former president George W. Bush, the hand-holder of Saudi kings and host to regular Ramadan dinners at the White House, set the moral tone of this ten-year war of attrition after 9/11. Islam, he insisted, is a "religion of peace." Obama is of the same mind. Read his Cairo speech. Obama is faced with a threat that did not exist in Bush's time, or at least it is a threat that has grown since then, which is Iran's nuclear-weapons program, which Obama refuses to act on or to permit Israel to eliminate. Obama, like George Bush and his father, former president George H. W. Bush, believes in sacrifice to attain sacrificial ends. Sacrifice of values is the touchstone of moral purity and worth. I raise this issue because our current Afghanistan strategy is bound to fail, regardless of whatever military gains we might make. To ensure that the Taliban and al-Quaeda don't resurge and become another force that could threaten the West, the U.S. would need to apply a "cleansing" policy to the country, similar to the de-Nazification program in Germany and General MacArthur's de-militarism policy in Japan (to eradicate all sources of Nihon gunkoku shugi), so forcefully described by John Lewis in his lectures and book, Nothing Less Than Victory. Essentially, the country would need to be "de-Islamicized." Can we credibly expect that to happen, even if our policymakers acknowledged the inherent bellicosity of the Islamic creed? No. More progress would be made if we attempted to eradicate Voodooism from Haiti. We "respect" Islam. We go out of our way to not offend Islamic sensibilities -- not only in the field, but right here at home. Instead, our policy advocates “containment” of a nuclear-armed Iran and the pacification of hostile populations with candy and American-built dams and hospitals. Of a war-fighting policy of avoiding civilian casualties at the expense of the lives of American troops. Would we have won WWII if we had treated Nazi ideology and doctrine, and Japanese militarism, as just examples of "diversity in political and cultural thought,” immune from moral judgment? No. The West, and especially the U.S., has got to stop looking at Islam as simply a religion to "respect," and treat it as the political-theocratic menace it is. Islam, by its doctrinaire nature, is implacable. It cannot be “peaceful” and bellicose at the same time. It must be so thoroughly discredited it would never show its head again. If that leaves Muslims the world-over disillusioned or angry, so be it. Why should we care what they think or even think of us? Our military forces should be allowed to destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan regardless of their location, proximity to civilians, or any other “extenuating” circumstance. Our forces should be regularly reminded that Islamic “extremists” do not reciprocate such “gentlemanly” rules of war. They should be reminded of 9/11, when nearly 3,000 American and other civilians perished on our own soil, with more to come, if we do not destroy states that sponsor terrorism. Short of that, the U.S. should just abandon Afghanistan and Pakistan and leave them to their tribal feuds and internal squabbles, but act militarily, if we are threatened, with overwhelming force. Winning the “hearts and minds” of those two countries is a lose-lose proposition, which it is intended to be. That cannot be over-emphasized. That is altruism in war, regardless of Colin Powell’s, General McChrystal’s, or Obama’s assurances. The “shrine” of America can be razed by bleeding it to death in a “war of appeasement” -- for the appeasement of zeroes. Unless that is grasped and acknowledged, in the long run, no amount of victory in Afghanistan is going to matter. *The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. 1943. New York: Plume-Penguin Centennial Edition, 2005, pp. 663-670. The speech can be found in Chapter XI, Part XIV, Howard Roark. Cross-posted from Metablog

Near the end of her September 1960 article in Human Events, “J.F.K. — High Class Beatnik?” about the keynote speech presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy delivered at the Democratic National Convention, Ayn Rand warns: When a man extols “ leadership”—leadership without direction—leadership without any stated purpose, program or ideal—leadership for the sake of leadership—you may be sure that you are hearing the voice of a man motivated by power-lust. It is specifically the power-lust of the Fascist variety, because the Communists promised their victims an alleged social ideal, while the Fascists offer nothing but loose talk about some unspecified form of racial or national “greatness.” Rand dissects the meaning of Kennedy’s non-promises to lead the country “somewhere,” but leaves the question unanswered, because Kennedy had not yet won the election and begun to implement his economic and political policies. Once he was in office, she later concluded that he was indeed a fascist in her seminal article, “The Fascist New Frontier,” which her publisher, Random House’s Bennett Cerf, refused to carry in a volume of her essays. In 1962 the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand delivered a talk entitled " The Fascist New Frontier" (reprinted in the recent collection "The Ayn Rand Column"), an analysis of President Kennedy's New Frontier social and economic programs. When she offered a written version of the talk as part of a projected volume of essays, her publisher, Bennett Cerf, "absolutely hit the roof." As he related in his memoir, "At Random," "I called her and said we were not going to publish any book that claimed Hitler and Jack Kennedy were alike." Rand refused to back down, and soon thereafter ended her association with Random House. Barack Obama, however, all throughout his campaign for the presidency, uttered progressive promises and has attempted to keep them. His masked, crudely nuanced rhetoric, once it was deciphered by anyone who wished to know what he was actually saying, is textbook socialist rhetoric. In possibly only one instance did he give the game away, when in 2008 he assured Joe the Plumber Wurzelbacher that he didn‘t want to tax Joe but it might be necessary. "My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody." As the news media and sympathizers like Bennett Cerf were awed by Kennedy’s rhetoric and non-promises, today sympathetic pundits and newscasters see the words and refuse to concede that socialism is precisely what Obama had promised. The news media largely explained away the “spread the wealth” statement in such a manner that one could have fallen asleep reading the interpretations. Obama’s folksy style of delivery, with or without a teleprompter, is far removed from JFK’s “high class” delivery of the same sentiments. JFK was anti-communist because he apparently did not agree with communism’s version of sacrifice, leadership, and national “greatness.” He had one wholly his own (which Rand ultimately described in the essay rejected by Random House). And, only when he was in office, like JFK, did Obama lay his cards on the table and fan them out for all to see. The New York Times ran an article on February 8th, “For Obama, Nuance on Race Invites Questions.” Here is reported the disappointment of the Congressional Black Caucus and prominent black spokesmen with Obama’s alleged failure to pass special legislation aimed at alleviating suffering among the country’s black population. On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed irritation that Mr. Obama has not created programs tailored specifically to African-Americans, who are suffering disproportionately in the recession. In December, some of them threatened to oppose new financial rules for banks until the White House promised to address the needs of minorities. The Times article — without bothering to enquire on how or why blacks are “suffering disproportionately” — quotes prominent blacks pro and con on whether Obama should focus on black issues and push for legislation that favors blacks or push for legislation that would affect “all people.” This is not the issue here. The issue is Obama himself. Dorothy Height, the 97-year-old chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, having counseled “every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt on matters of race, made a plea in a recent interview for Mr. Obama to be left alone.” “ We have never sat down and said to the 43 other presidents: ‘How does it feel to be a Caucasian? How do you feel as a white president? Tell me what that means to you,’ ” Dr. Height said. “I am not one to think that he should do more for his people than for other people. I want him to be free to be himself.” “His people” and “other people“? These references bespeak a career of thinking in terms of race, of contentious tribes. So Dr. Height was unable to ask the more significant question: Does Obama even have a self to “be himself"? A self, after all, is something one creates independently of what others think, say, or do, irrespective of the culture, of one’s race or gender, of one‘s ancestors, of one‘s immediate family. It is a measure of independent thought, a consequence of one's own value-judgments. To judge by his two books, Obama has been other-oriented all his life. Such a person has no "self-esteem" because there is very little self to begin with. His "self-esteem" is overwhelmingly dependent on what others think of him, and can't correctly be called "self-esteem" at all. To claim that Obama has “high” or “low” self-esteem would be as much an error as calling a Jackson Pollack canvas a “work of art.” Yet, some critics, supporters and opponents alike, accuse Obama of being narcissistic. There is a certain narcissism apparent in the character of his public appearances and utterances. But is he guilty of being a narcissist? He is certainly not an egoist. In every one of his public statements, expressions of self-interest and the morality of self-interest are conspicuously absent. Obama’s chief sales pitch has been from the beginning his selflessness, echoing JFK’s imperative of asking of what he can do for his country, and not what his country can do for him. Well, the country elected him, and now the peril of his selflessness can be measured by what he is doing to the country, not for it. One of the best Socratic expositions on selflessness is to be found in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, in the discussion between Howard Roark and Gail Wynand on Wynand’s yacht about the essences of selfishness and selflessness.* Roark tells Wynand that men who seek the approval of others, do so “At the price of their own self-respect. In the realm of greatest importance — the realm of values, of judgment, of spirit, of thought — they place others above self, in the exact manner which altruism demands. A truly selfish man cannot be affected by the approval of others. He doesn’t need it.” Second-handers, Roark tells Wynand, “have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: “Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others think is true?’….You don’t think through another’s brain and you don’t work through another’s hands. When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness...Second-handers have no sense of reality.” Earlier in their exchange, leading up to the role of altruism in selflessness and collectivism, Wynand observes, “[Ellsworth] Toohey would tell me that this is not what he means by altruism. He means I shouldn’t leave it up to the people to decide what they want. I should decide it. I should determine, not what I like nor what they like, but what I think they should like, and then ram it down their throats. It would have to be rammed, since their voluntary choice is the Banner. Well, there are several such altruists in the world today.” This is one of the few indirect references to the dictators and political power-lusters of The Fountainhead’s time, ranging from FDR to Hitler and Mussolini. Roark and Wynand discuss the fate of Peter Keating as an instance of “actual selflessness.“ Keating is one of two of Rand’s principal selfless men. The other is Ellsworth Toohey, one of newspaperman Wynand’s star critics and inveterate schemer after power over men, one of them being the willing pawn, Keating. When Roark says that actual selflessness is what is destroying the world, Wynand asks: “The ideal they say does not exist” “They’re wrong. It does exist — though not in the way they imagine…Look at Peter Keating.” “You look at him. I hate his guts.” “I’ve looked at him — at what’s left of him — and it’s helped me to understand. He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self?” Peter Keating was without question not a narcissist. A narcissist at least has a self. What is it to be narcissistic? More than being a species of vanity — which itself must be distinguished from legitimate pride and self-respect — narcissism at least presumes that one is aware of one’s identity. It is seeing some value in an actual, real aspect of oneself — a demonstrable skill or ability, physical beauty, and the like. It must be real but is the object of exaggerated absorption by oneself, exaggerated in that it becomes an irrational obsession to the exclusion of all other concerns. Pride can be a virtue, but narcissism is an irrational fascination. It could be called a neurosis. It could also be partly “other-oriented.” Obama is simply a more successful Peter Keating, one of the “secondhand lives“ in The Fountainhead. Whereas Keating's mother pushed her son into a more "prestigious" and possibly more lucrative career (architecture), Obama's mother was a communist ideologue who raised her son to be one, as well, and his having communist mentors as tutors simply ensured that he would have no personal values (other than conventional ones, such as basketball; it may be significant to note that, since assuming office, he has taken up the relatively solitary game of golf). As Keating was guilty of not pursuing his own values (painting, Catherine Halsey), and reaped the consequences, Obama might have had his own values, but never pursued them, never said "no" to his mother. To judge by his rise from "community organizer" (a low-echelon collectivist) to state senator to U.S. senator to the presidency, Obama can't be "himself" unless he is in the spotlight of approval by others. One could say this about JFK, as well, and to a lesser extent about several of his predecessors. Obama has surrounded himself with advisors who reflect in varying degrees his absence of personal values, his absence of a self. Since it is the natural attribute of men to achieve some sort of efficacy — or proof of it — Obama seeks it in how much power he can impose over those in his immediate coterie and over the entire country — to ram government health care and stimulus packages and cap-and-trade down the throats of the public. His cabinet and advisors are of the same aspic-like material; they have senses of "self" and power because they are "valued" by someone who has even less "self" than they. Obama himself derives "esteem" from power and the envy of those who do not possess it, but, as Gail Wynand (and Peter Keating) learned in the end, there is no "self" there to appreciate it. Success in legislation (what little there has been of it) brings Obama a transient "glow" of efficacy, then it dies, like a cheap, spent light bulb, and he renews the search for it. The hallmark of a tyrant or dictator is selflessness, requiring an endless quest to keep reality and perceived enemies at bay, which requires accumulating power over reality — by creating nothing, but becoming a parasite of other men's achievements — by way of power over others — they somehow know the secret of life, and their approval and obedience are necessary to the selfless man‘s survival and sense of security. Obama the narcissist is illusory. A narcissist can at least see himself in a mirror. Obama sees in a mirror only what other people see. He cannot be “free to be himself,” because he not only has no respect or “concern for facts, ideas, or work,” but he can have no self-respect. The self he may imagine is his own exists solely in the minds of others - the minds of his staff, of his supporters, of the press, who assure him that he is a great man striving to make real great things. He struggles to fill the role. But the “great things” he wishes to accomplish cannot be realized without resorting to coercion and extortion. His other-oriented self “glows” in the presence of others, but begins to fade the moment he is left alone to “be himself.” Then all he can experience is what is left of himself, the restless, thrashing residue of what self may have once existed before he surrendered it. The self the public sees, however, is but a cloud of swirling gnats that hovers in no particular place. Obama is one of many “such altruists” in the world today. To call him a narcissist is to pay him a compliment, almost as contradictory a one as calling him the “leader of the free world.” *The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. 1943. New York: Plume-Penguin Centennial Edition, 2005, pp. 633-636. The dialogue can be found in Chapter XI, Part IV, Howard Roark. Cross-posted from Metablog

Defending Ayn Rand An interesting and important cultural development -- in the way of two critical skirmishes in the conflict between Objectivism and its mainstream critics, left, right, and fringe -- was the Objectivist and general reader response to a “review” of Anne C. Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made by noted conservative critic Anthony Daniels, who also writes under the name of Theodore Dalrymple, in The New Criterion, and to another “review,” ostensively of Atlas Shrugged, by a conservative-libertarian critic (for lack of a better appellation), Cathy Young, at Real Clear Politics. While Objectivist input was overwhelmed by the number of responses from doubters (of Rand and/or of Daniels and Young), pragmatists, certified and vitriolic enemies of Rand and her work, the genuinely curious, the clueless, the sarcastic, and the disgruntled, and by what one commentator called “seminar trolls,” Objectivists put in a strong showing, explicating the philosophy and exonerating Rand of the outrageous allegations about her by the critics. In both reviews, the authors’ chief subjects were Rand herself, as a means of criticizing Rand and her underlying philosophy of egoism, and not the biography or the novel itself. Both reviewers misrepresented Rand and the novel, and both accused her of having concocted, among other things, a “totalitarian” political philosophy, while at the same time neglecting (or refusing) to examine, except in the most superficial and sarcastic manner, the tenets of Objectivism. Both based their perspectives on what other critics in the past have said about Rand, without demonstrating or exhibiting a first-hand acquaintance with her and her works. Daniels’ article was a review of the notoriously gossipy Heller biography, and not of the fractionally better but no less egregious Jennifer Burns biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. A review by Daniels of the Burns biography, however, would have produced the same contemptible litany of exegeses. Reader responses to the Daniels review, “Ayn Rand: engineer of souls,” have totaled well over two hundred. Faced with the unusual volume of interest, the editor of The New Criterion, Roger Kimball, thought it wise to come to the critic’s defense by publishing an endorsement of Daniels on Pajamas Media, and, because it was of the same snickering, snorting, iconoclastic tone and character as the Daniels review, it, too, has generated over one hundred responses. Cathy Young’s review has, to date, generated over one hundred. However, this was not her first assault on Rand. “A Rand Revival“ is a warmed-over iteration of her March 2005 “Ayn Rand at 100,” in Reason Magazine: Rand was wrong, and her philosophy is impractical; she had a totalitarian streak, and it shows in her uncompromising philosophy. Like her conservative counterparts, she frets over the “extremism” of Objectivism. After alternately praising and condemning Rand, Young concludes in her Reason “tribute”: From yet another perspective, Rand can be seen as a great eccentric thinker and writer whose work is less about a practical guide to real life than about a unique, individual, stylized vision, a romantic vision that transforms and transcends real life. Before repeating from her Reason article her concerns about the Taggart Tunnel disaster and the fate of the passengers, whom she did not believe deserved such an end, Young claims in “A Rand Revival” that Rand's work also has a darker, more disturbing aspect--one that, unfortunately, is all too good a fit for this moment in America's political life. That is her intellectual intolerance and her tendency to demonize her opponents. This is in the “tradition” of Rand’s detractors, begun by Whittaker Chambers, an early neoconservative, and Granville Hicks, a communist: to demonize her by painting her as half-human (she had her good points!) and half-gargoyle (she was domineering, nasty, dogmatic, no exemplar of her “extremist“ philosophy, a crypto-fascist, a closet Stalinist, etc.! How can any mature person take her seriously?). Daniels, who hardly mentions Heller or her biography at all in his article (and misspells her first name), is not on the same page as Young, but on the next one: Although she wrote in English, and her two most famous books are American in subject matter and location, she remained deeply Russian in outlook and intellectual style to the end of her days. America could take Rand out of Russia, but not Russia out of Rand. Her work properly belongs to the history of Russian, not American, literature—and nineteenth-century Russian literature at that. Daniels asserts that Rand’s literary and philosophical importance is in the minor Russian “tradition” of Dobrolyubov, Pisarev, and Chernyshevsky, without offering any evidence of those writers’ positions or even explaining who they were. This is inexcusable name-dropping. He repeats the oft-made charge that her literary heroes are “Nietzschean in inspiration.” Furthermore, he asserts, The only other tradition known to me that shares this unfortunate combination of characteristics is that of the German materialists of the second half of the nineteenth century such as Moleschott and Buchner. Really? What characteristics were they? And who were Moleschott and Buchner? What did they say? Daniels does not deign to enlighten us. After all, if the reader does not know who those writers were, it must be a sign of his cultural illiteracy for not having glommed the significance of those obscure writers. It isn’t his fault that most readers do not boast degrees in Russian and German studies. While both critics labor to demonstrate that Ayn Rand is philosophically and literarily insignificant, or at least a cultural anomaly, the response to the Daniels and Young articles, as well as to Roger Kimball’s encomium must have startled the editors of The New Criterion and Real Clear Politics, proving that she is of both philosophically and literarily of importance enough that so many readers have something to say about her. With that, among many of the fine and well-articulated defenses of Rand, I offer one of the best responses to the Daniels article, by “PeterM.” AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EDITORS AT THE NEW CRITERION It must now be surely clear to Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball that they erred first in soliciting Anthony Daniels to write such an thoroughly incoherent hit job on Ayn Rand, and then doubly so for publishing such a transparently dishonest smear of Ayn Rand. If Ayn Rand is the “Chernyshevsky of individualism” then the New Criterion has become the National Inquirer of sophisticated public taste. And of course the smears continue in the “comments” section, where several seminar trolls continue to peddle the tiresome and banal talking points from William F. Buckley’s “Anti-Rand Playbook.” The real story here is not Daniels’ all-too-predictable distortions and lies, nor is it the psycho-autobiographical character of Daniels’ self-revelations. No, what’s most interesting about the Daniels piece is that it represents the final, last gasp attempt by conservatives and neoconservatives to purge Ayn Rand from the “minds and hearts” of millions of ordinary Americans who regard her as America’ greatest defender of freedom, individual rights, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism. In just the last couple of years, in ways that could only be characterized as eerily similar, the New Criterion, the Weekly Standard, City Journal, and Commentary have all put out a “hit” on Ayn Rand and all basically say the very same thing. It’s as though a small faction of conservative and neoconservative “intellectuals” have agreed that they’ll all borrow (i.e., plagiarize) from the same playbook. And as Daniels frankly admits, he and all the other conservative Thought Police don’t and can’t understand why Ayn Rand is popular with so many non-intellectual, regular conservatives and libertarians (and even a few liberals). They don’t even try. Their disconnect from the values or ordinary Americans is breathtaking. It should be obvious to all by now that the attacks on Ayn Rand by certain elements within the conservative intellectual movement are motivated primarily by nothing more than fear--and a kind of juvenile fear at that. In the end, however, it doesn’t matter. Ayn Rand will continue to sell hundreds of thousands of books every year, growing numbers of sophisticated and accomplished intellectuals are taking her very seriously, the Ayn Rand Institute is expanding dramatically its academic programs for high school and college students, there are now over 60 university programs around the country that have courses that include the reading of Atlas Shrugged, and her influence on the grass-roots Tea Party movement is spreading rapidly and deeply. In the end, it’s much more likely that Commentary, the Weekly Standard, City Journal and National Review will disappear with the rest of the Mainstream before Ayn Rand’s books and ideas will disappear. Fear not. You see, there is hope after all. Cross-posted from Metablog