Final post for the month of July:

 

The Democrats, unfortunately, are kowtowing to the Europeans without ever acknowledging European duplicity in the United Nations and around the globe. Matt Welsh illustrates the problem beautifully by asking this question:

 

But what if Western Europe is a hypocritical foreign-policy basket case of knee-jerk America-bashers and diplomatic softies who refuse to back rhetoric with concrete money or troops?

 

Oh, that's right -- Western Europe, not all of Europe. He follows that up with the obvious point highlighting Democratic gamesmanship on this issue:

 

This question is getting decidedly less play.

 

Yes, it certainly is. With that, ladies and gentlemen, I am out of the great Sunshine State until somewhere around August 2^nd or 3^rd  of next week. See you later, alligators.

 

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July 29, 2004

 

Jonah Goldberg, writing in USA Today, provides some interesting info (and makes a good point) about Barack Obama:

Still, it was Obama's speech that captured the imagination. But what was great about his speech would have been more appropriate at a Republican convention. He spoke of the debt we owe to the nation's founders and to the documents they left us. He spoke of "E Pluribus Unum" and didn't make nakedly racial appeals.

If Obama — son of an African immigrant and a white woman from Kansas, raised in Hawaii — were a Republican and talked this way, he'd be called an "Uncle Tom." Nonetheless, it's certainly progress when liberal "rising stars" reject the poisonous identity politics of past Democratic conventions.

True, true, true.

 

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July 28, 2004

 

I was tremendously impressed with Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last night. Tremendously impressed. But I thought this was a clever, and mostly correct, comeback from Roger Clegg:

 

Barack Obama gave a fine speech, but it was not a speech that reflects the current Democratic Party. It celebrated America as "a magical place"; it did not bemoan our racism and imperialism. It professed that this black man "owe[d] a debt to those who came before" him; it did not call for reparations. It spoke of an "awesome God"; it did not banish Him from public discourse. It admitted that black parents, and black culture, need to change the way black children are raised; it did not blame or even mention racism. It quoted "E pluribus unum" and translated it correctly as "Out of many, one"; it did not misquote it, as Al Gore infamously did, as "Many out of one." Most of all, the speech celebrated one America, "one people," and rejected the notion of a black America, a white America, a Latino America, and an Asian America--a notion completely foreign to the multiculturalism that now dominates the Democratic Party.

Well, Barack Obama didn’t reject multiculturalism (neither do I). What he rejected was the idea that black America isn’t America – something supporters AND opponents of multiculturalism seem to have a severe problem properly comprehending.

 

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What can one say about Michelle Malkin? Other than – man, this woman takes no prisoners! Today she provides five reasons to fear the Democratic Party. All five reasons are good points, too.

 

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July 27, 2004

 

Mark Steyn in the London Telegraph, discussing his personal template for the most UNELECTABLE Democratic candidate, comes up with John F’n Kerry:

 

But what do I know? My ne plus ultra of unelectability was chosen by Democratic primary voters this spring mainly because he was perceived to be "electable". I don't know where they got that idea from. Probably from the American media, who seem barely to recognise Kerry's principal defect – his boring self-righteousness – perhaps because it's also theirs. Nevertheless, if this week the senator gives the kind of speech he's given for the last year, Americans will flee in horror from the prospect of spending four years listening to this guy.

 

My feelings exactly.

 

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From the Wall Street Journal, commenting on the Sandy Berger theft of sensitive intelligence from the National Archives and notations in the final report of the 9/11 Commission:

Toward that end we can't help but note page 134 of the Commission report, which documents a proposal early in 1999 to send a U-2 mission over Afghanistan to gather intelligence on where bin Laden was hiding out. Mr. Clarke objected on the grounds that Pakistani intelligence would tip bin Laden off that the U.S. was planning a bombing mission. "Armed with this knowledge," the Commission quotes Mr. Clarke as saying, "old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad." Is that the same secular Baghdad that we are told would never cooperate with Islamist al Qaeda?

Nah – couldn’t be? Baghdad!?! Saddam!?! Al Qaeda!?!

 

Say it ain’t so, Richard Clarke.

 

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Wretchard the Cat distills our choice this November quite clearly and quite properly

 

Although the exigencies of politics and the need to attract away the conservative fringe (by playing Amazing Grace for example) may keep John Kerry from being forthright it cannot obscure the fact that two opposing, and therefore contradictory visions, are contending for the electorate this November. The first argues that despite the shortcomings of multilateralism, diplomacy and concession, it is still the best way to settle accounts with radical Islam. It will concede that more might have been done to prevent September 11 but it will maintain steadfastly that the alternative, which was to strike at enemies the way they have struck at us is fundamentally wrong and dangerous. And by exclusion it will maintain that whatever the dangers of Clintonian policy the world was safer then than it is today. Ths second point of view will argue that eight years of wilfull blindness; supporting Bosnian Muslims; ignorning the A. Q. Khan network of nuclear proliferation, buying North Korea its own reactors and receiving Yasser Araft at the White House; the whole policy of concession, bought not a whit of safety. It will argue that our enemies are even now on the point of obtaining nuclear weapons to turn against us, and will if we return to the policies of the past. It will concede that there have been disappointments in Iraq, but that by any historical yardstick our progress to victory -- and here is the unique word -- has been steady, irresistable and therefore inevitable.

 

I’m still trying to figure out how in the hell so many people are missing this obvious fact.

 

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July 26, 2004

 

Melanie Phillips has a fantastic column up discussing, politically, our post-moral confusion. British Tories, who should be bullish on the War in Iraq, are allowing their distaste for Tony Blair to get in the way of their good sense. Here in America, of course, Democrats who should be supporting the development of a free press and human rights in Iraq are allowing their distaste for President Bush to get in the way of THEIR good sense. Though not exactly mirrors of one another, it can be roughly stated that American Liberals are analogous to British Labour, both with a socialist base and American Conservatives are roughly analogous to British Tories, both with a commerce-friendly status-quo base. Phillips, after writing that in today’s confused climate, “There’s more political cross-dressing going on than in a convention of drag queens,” goes after the single-most-confused blogger on the planet, Andrew Sullivan.

 

But the key point is that Sullivan defines himself as a conservative. And there are many within the British Conservative party who hold very similar views on both domestic and foreign issues. But these British Tories are not conservatives. Nor are they authentic liberals (not the same as the statist left, although in the US the terms are even more confusingly conflated). They are libertines, people who have gone with the contemporary cultural flow of destroying moral rules and boundaries. And it is these pseudo-conservatives who tend to be on that wing of the party that is having a fit of the vapours about nation-building and preventive action in the Middle East, and love instead the EU and the UN and John Kerry. They prefer the ‘stability’ of tyranny and its world export, genocidal terrorism. They are, in short, appeasers and sometimes even fellow-travellers of wrong-doing, both at home and abroad.

 

Appeasers and fellow-travelers. That sums it up. Phillips, in her column, quotes Michael Novak at length and so will I. He wrote a strong piece on roughly the same subject. Here is how he closes his column:

 

Then, too, the Left has developed a tic about neoconservatives. These former leftists (for a former leftist is what a neoconservative is, of the first generation anyway) do have a vision of the future, a bright vision to rival that of the Left. They fight the Left, ideology for ideology, policy proposal for policy proposal, class analysis for class analysis. The neoconservatives side with the conservatives on most issues, but with an attitude, and an aim, and a determination. They are, in the life of the intellect, warriors. Their sharpest weapon is the reality check. That is their comparative advantage over the Left. They have been "mugged by" and won over to reality. The Left has lost argument after argument to the neoconservatives for the past 20 years — has proved to be on the wrong side of reality on issue after issue — and hence reserves for the neoconservatives a special loathing.

George W. Bush turns out to have been far closer to the neoconservatives (though he is not one) than Ann Richards and Al Gore ever believed possible. True enough, he is no intellectual, and would not want to be one. Still, his mind is quicker, of a more tempered steel, and honed to a more acute practicality than lazy-minded leftists before 2001 ever allowed themselves to imagine. They "misunderestimated" him then, and still do.

George Bush wants to change the country's direction. He wants each person to own and to be able to will to his children the unused portion of his Social Security. He wants to make personal responsibility the central principle of our common life. He wants a more compassionate, initiative-taking citizenry, less passive and less dependent upon government. Help for the needy, but not help that is condescending and incapacitating.

Compassionate Conservatism, defined.

 

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Quote, from the website of the Instapundit:

 

During the Cold War, whenever I heard someone talk about nuclear weapons causing fear and distorting our society, I would point out that the United Kingdom had a sizable arsenal and effective delivery systems for its nuclear weaponry. The UK could, if it wished, cause incalculable damage to the United States and there wasn't a soul in the U.S. whose sleep was troubled by British atomic bombs. The problem wasn't nuclear weapons; it was who had them.

 

Can this be reasonably denied? Does it not shed contextual light on the correctness of the War in Iraq?

 

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Daniel Drezner is a political science blogger based at the University of Chicago. I found an interesting discussion on his board regarding the Treasury Departments in the Clinton administration vs. the Bush administration. What really interested me, however, was this comment from a reader. It corresponds to what I understand to be the primary difference between the Clinton presidential campaigns and the Kerry presidential campaign. Because of this fundamental difference, the Kerry for President process seems destined to implode:

I’m also puzzled by the fact that Brad DeLong still thinks he’s a serious player in the Democrat Party. Why does he continue living in the past? Hasn’t anyone told DeLong that Bill Clinton is not running for president in 2004? The latter gentleman unabashedly campaigned for free trade and a non adversarial attitude towards the business community. Clinton could slap the face of left wingers (like in the Sister Souljah incident) and still win the election. This is indisputably not the situation for John Kerry. The Howard Dean types are right there next to the Massachusetts senator. Brad DeLong obviously believes that the Deaniacs will allow themselves to be marginalized if Kerry wins the election. Is anybody else buying this fantasy?

The DLC is certainly HOPING the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party will buy it. Will America? I think not. I pray not.

 

And yes, I understand that without a certain gentleman named Ross Perot it is also likely that Bill Clinton would never have become President. That does not take away from my larger point.

 

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July 23, 2004

 

Spike Lee has a new flick coming out soon; the St. Pete Times has an interesting story on the man and the flick.

Some people don't like to hear what Lee is very willing to say, perhaps, it has been suggested, just like comedian Bill Cosby and his recent rebukes of poor African-American parenting. Lee addressed the subject in Get on the Bus and, more positively, in the semiautobiographical Crooklyn.

"I don't think I'm crying in the wilderness," Lee said. "There are other people out there, but it takes someone like Bill Cosby who's well-respected to get people to listen.

"I'm in Bill Cosby's debt for saying what he said. I think what he's done is say, "Let's refocus, let's think about what's really important, and let's mobilize and try to correct these ills that are affecting black Americans, but in a greater sense are affecting America and the world.'

"There are many ways that we can attack that. I'm going to hopefully get together with Bill Cosby soon and see what we can come up with."

This is what has to be said, accepted and respected far more than is the case today. What is, you say? “There are many ways that we can attack that.” That’s right. And still be black, and respectful of things black.

 

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July 22, 2004

 

Craig Henry of Lead and Gold has some thoughts on giving credit where credit is due (ahem, by NOT assuming incompetence in our security public servants, by the way):

 

Many posts and articles on the Berger matter quote Richard Clarke's verdict that the Millennium plot to bomb LAX was foiled by luck. Luck, in the sense of a fluke occurrence, had nothing to do with it. A vigilant U.S. Customs Inspector followed up on her suspicions and searched the trunk of a car trying to enter the US at the Canadian border. She expected to find drugs but, instead, found the makings of one or more big bombs.

Her name is Diana Dean and she deserves to have her name remembered and get credit for her good work.

This just isn't a matter of giving Ms. Dean her rightful credit. It also points to an important lesson going forward in the WoT. No number of principals meetings in Washington or action plans by Homeland Security will protect a single American. The rubber meets the road at the street level where alert LEOs and dedicated investigators do their job.

Richard Clarke, like many others, was content to attribute America’s ability to thwart the Millennium Terrorist Plot to dumb luck. Wrong. We need to be more focused on stressing to individual citizens and public servants to do make sure they do THEIR job, first and foremost. Then, we need to keep the Patriot Act and squash any remaining remnants of the “law enforcement” approach to the Global War on Terror. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

 

Something to think about today with the release of the 9/11 Report.

 

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July 21, 2004

 

William Safire has a very interesting column up today looking inside the “Republican brain” (using himself as the model) and finds five components engaging in a form of cognitive dissonance but eventually coming to a resolution which, once consciously recognized, is true to his personal political philosophy. The five components are: [1] economic conservative, [2] social conservative, [3] libertarian conservative, [4] idealistic conservative, and [5] cultural conservative.

 

John McWhorter, based on his research into languages, has talked of hybridicity and this seems to espouse a political component of that concept. In his column today Safire writes:

But think of these internecine battles not as tugs of war among single-minded groups; instead, think of them as often-conflicting ideas held within the brain of an individual Republican. What goes on is "cognitive dissonance," the jangling of competing inclinations, with the owner of the brain having to work out trade-offs, suppressions and compromises until he or she achieves a kind of puzzled tranquillity within.

What helps me work out that continual internal skirmishing is a mind-set. That brings us to those "values" that every candidate talks about. My values include self-reliance over community dependence, intervention over isolation, self-discipline over society's regulation, finding pleasure in work rather than working to find pleasure. Principles like those help me gel a mind-set that reduces the loudest dissonances among my fistful of clanging conservatisms.

Another aid to resolve the dissonance is every partisan's need for a political home. Independence is fine for the occasionally involved, but if influence as a participant or commentator is desired, one political side or the other must be taken.

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There is a curious story making the rounds about a so-called “Syrian” musical band that caused a reporter on a flight to the West Coast some serious concerns when they exhibited suspicious behavior. Here's the link, check out the embedded links too.

 

My take, included in the comments on the Winds of Change website linked to, above, is this:

 

Why is it that no one seems to have figured out the LIKELY scenario (unless I've missed it): namely, this was a probing job -- OURS!

Are we not aware that American security officials have ways to test our domestic carriers and judge how they respond?

This sickness in our country of assuming incompetence (which is not a left or right sickness; it is pervasive) does not assist us in the Global War on Terror.

UPDATE: Clinton Taylor has a column up apparently resolving the mystery of the Syrians on Flight 327.

 

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July 20, 2004

 

Anti-Americanism is popular abroad and at home; I keep wondering when left wingers will wake up and smell the coffee? I know that will not happen for the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, but they are now what they have always been – an elite fringe. Rob Foot, writing in Australia, makes a great point too often forgotten by African Americans and many others:

No one has ever claimed that capitalism is perfect; but at least it's always been more open to correction than its old enemy was ever revealed to be. So it's not the end of the road for the rational Left. The true dinosaurs are beyond recovery, of course, but one day they will at least do the rest of us the favour of putting us out of their misery (or themselves out of ours) by shutting up, and confining themselves to sulkily reading - and re-reading, and re-reading - their Chomsky and Pilger.

AS A PARTING SHOT, might I offer a coda to truly horrify them - the dinosaurs, I mean; one which I suspect dwells somewhere in the sub-terrain of the irrational Left's collective sub-conscious, and fuels its implacable hatred of the United States.

In the past five hundred years, perhaps in all history, there has only been one genuinely successful revolution - one that delivered on its promises for a better world, based on the principles of freedom, equality, enterprise and endeavour; one that actually succeeded, despite the acknowledged imperfection of some of its outcomes. And of these latter, thanks largely to the failure of socialism, we now understand rather better that politics cannot be relied upon to correct the human condition.

It was not the English Revolution of 1641, nor the French of 1789, or the French or German of 1848, or the Russian of 1917, the Chinese of 1949, or the Cuban of 1958, the essays of the Parisian students in 1968, nor the host of abortive adventures in Asia and Africa.

It was the American Revolution of 1776. That's the only one that has ever really worked.

Problems and all. Slavery and all. Jim Crow and all. It’s still the only one that has ever really worked.

 

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July 19, 2004

 

Hmmmmmm . . . the Washington Post reports the following:

Karic Enough to Send the Very Best

It's not often that members of Congress campaign overseas, but Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) gave it a try last month in, of all places, Serbia.

Brown was spotted over there in early June just before the first presidential balloting, working hard for candidate Bogoljub Karic, one of the richest men in the country.

Brother Dragomir Karic, Loop fans might recall, couldn't get into the United States to attend the National Prayer Breakfast last year. Because of the Karic family ties to former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic back in the old days, State Department folks wouldn't let him in.

Bogoljub ran a spirited race. Brown went to several rallies with him around the country in the week before the June 13 vote. (Unclear who paid.) She gave short endorsement speeches at the rallies and at one called him "the Serbian John F. Kennedy," according to one source. Another source said she led cheers something like "Go Bogo." She also did some television for him, noting that he founded a university. (Which gave her a fine honorary doctorate.) Maybe because of her efforts, Karic came in a most respectable third with almost 19 percent of the vote, ahead of the government-favored candidate. The first-round winner, a throwback-type ultranationalist, got 30.4 percent of the vote. Karic threw his support behind the U.S.-backed pro-democracy candidate, who won the runoff two weeks later.

Go ‘head on wit ya bad self, Corrine! But, damn, a Slobodan Milosevic buddy???

 

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July 18, 2004

 

Check out this link listing Ten Reasons for Democrats to Vote for President Bush. I agree with almost all of it. However, I initially preferred George H.W. Bush to Reagan AND Bush 43. All three are cool with me, now.

 

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Donald Sensing on the five heroic virtues: strength, courage, determination, daring and love – and how counter-cultural they can be:

 

Culture, especially the pop-culture psychobabble of talk shows, magazine and feature articles, denigrates these virtues. We live in an age of dependency and co-dependency, of tolerance of vice and immorality, an age of non-judgmentalism. So when our VBS curriculum tells our children to be courageous, the lesson makes no sense unless they come to understand that the alternative is cowardice, and that courage is a virtue, cowardice is a vice. That the courageous are to be admired and the cowardly not was not part of the lesson plan, but it is an implicit and logical conclusion.

This is a counter-cultural message, especially heartening to see our denomination teach when the oldline North American churches generally are co-opted arms of culture rather than challengers and reformers of it.

 

Co-opted arms of culture rather than challengers and reformers of it – nice way to put it.

 

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David Aaronovitch, in Britian discussing the sanctimonious assertions of a former British Foreign Secretary who was on the job while the Rwandan genocide developed and festered in the mid-1990s:

Then there was Bosnia. Over three years, as one author puts it, 'a European country was destroyed. Tens of thousands of its inhabitants were murdered.' Western inaction, sculpted into a strategy of arms embargoes and humanitarian lorry runs by Hurd in particular, caused fury in the Muslim world. One Arab journalist wrote: 'Diplomats and ambassadors amicably explaining Western actions will be talking to the deaf. Only when blood flows in their own cities and bodies are strewn in their own streets will they really understand.'

One week after Hurd resigned from the Foreign Office, as many as 8,000 Bosnian civilians were massacred by Serbs outside Srebrenica. Within 13 months Lord Hurd, now employed by NatWest, had a 'discreet breakfast' with Slobodan Milosevic (now being tried for war crimes at the Hague) to thank the Serbian despot over some business decisions. 'More than any country,' Hurd had minuted to his Prime Minister during the Bosnian crisis, 'we have been the realists.'

[Hurd had commented this past week that L. Paul Bremer would have been better served by NOT visiting the site of mass graves attributable to Saddam Hussein; instead he should have gone to Fallujah and apologized for Iraqi civilian deaths there] After Rwanda and Bosnia, however, there were no Huttons, no Butlers to scrutinise such massive foreign policy failures, and no one suggested that Hurd should visit the graves of those who died as a consequence of his studied inaction. Which is just as well, because there are too many of them.

At a time when American and coalition troops are fighting and dying in the field, it is remarkable that this kind of schoolboy politics runs rampant. Another lesson in democracy, I guess.

 

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July 17, 2004

 

Eve Garrard of normblog, commenting on the left-wing tactic of critiquing the Iraq war effort based on the supposed lack of middle class and upper class warriors among the troops. That usually leads to a point (made in this case by Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber) usually stating something like this:

 

Those who have made the 'humanitarian' case for war have never addressed the dirty little issue of who runs the risks and who does the dying.

 

But Eve accepts the challenge and fires back, noting that the questioners have taken a blind eye to the equally applicable other side of the coin, the “no war in Iraq” crowd. As Eve correctly notes:

 

it applies to both sides. Are those who are against the war prepared to spend time, along with their families, living under the dictates of a murderous psychopath? Would a million Stoppers have marched against intervention if their own children would thereby have been immured in the Iraqi torture chambers? Or is it OK for people to be tortured and die, without help from outside, so long as our country, and our comfortable lives, aren't under threat? If the hawks are too ready to let soldiers die in pursuit of a humanitarian cause, then the doves are too ready to let civilians, including innocent children, be tortured and killed rather than risk Western lives. There are dirty little unaddressed and unacknowledged issues on both sides of this debate, and the main thing we can learn from it is that people who have enough time to sit around writing are generally protected from most of the horrors about which they try to form reasonable moral opinions. This fact shouldn't deter us from trying to form the most reasonable opinions that we can, but it does suggest that a bit of humility would be appropriate before charging others with, in effect, holding life cheap. The truth is that most people participating in the debate about Iraq, hawks and doves alike, will not themselves be put at physical risk if their own views prevail, although others certainly will be. The criterion - unreadiness to participate in the risk - by which those who support the war in Iraq may be found to be morally imperfect is one which, if applied even-handedly, will reveal that those hostile to the war are also morally imperfect, and for the same reason. What we should infer from this, in the technical jargon we philosophers like to use, is that even in matters of war and peace the pot shouldn't call the kettle black. (Eve Garrard.)

 

 

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Devastating column from Mark Steyn on our truth-challenged CIA operative, Joe Wilson.

 

That's what lying is, by the way: intentional deceit, not unreliable intelligence. And I'm not usually the sort to bandy the liar-liar-pants-on-fire charge beloved by so many in our politics today, but I'll make an exception in the case of Wilson, who's never been shy about the term. He called Bush a "liar" and he called Cheney a "lying sonofabitch," on stage at a John Kerry rally in Iowa.

 

Saddam wanted yellowcake for one reason: to strike at his neighbors in the region, and beyond that at Britain, America and his other enemies. In other words, he wanted the uranium in order to kill you.

 

Exactly.

 

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Curious question from National Review Online, filed under the Department of Uninteresting Facts. What does it say that it struck my curiousity enough for me to categorize them? I know, I know -- really anal about some strange, useless facts. And then, after first using a particular poor display, they cleaned up a little bit -- but not THIS good.

 

Presidential Snapshot, based on (1) siblings, (2) birth order, and (3) status as oldest male.

 

	Name	# of Siblings	Oldest?	Oldest Boy?
1	G. Washington	5	Y	Y
2	J. Adams	0	NA	NA
3	T. Jefferson	9	N	Y
4	J. Madison	11	Y	Y
5	J. Monroe	4	N	Y
6	J Q Adams	4	N	Y
7	A Jackson	2	N	N
8	M Van Buren	4	Y	Y
9	Wm H. Harrison	1	Y	Y
10	J Tyler	7	N	N
11	J. Polk	9	Y	Y
12	Z Taylor	8	N	N
13	M Fillmore	8	N	Y
14	F. Pierce	6	N	N
15	J Buchanan	10	Y	Y
16	A Lincoln	2	N	Y
17	A Johnson	1	N	N
18	US Grant	5	Y	Y
19	R Hayes	1	N	Y
20	J Garfield	4	N	N
21	C Arthur	7	N	Y
22	G Cleveland	8	N	N
23	B Harrison	9	N	N
24	G Cleveland	8	N	N
25	Wm McKinley	8	N	N
26	T Roosevelt	4	N	Y
27	W Taft	3	N	N
28	W Wilson	3	N	Y
29	W Harding	7	Y	Y
30	C Coolidge	1	Y	Y
31	H Hoover	2	N	N
32	FDR	0	N	N
33	H Truman	2	Y	Y
34	DDE	6	N	N
35	JFK	8	N	N
36	LBJ	4	Y	Y
37	R Nixon	4	N	N
38	G Ford	0	Y	Y
39	J Carter	3	Y	Y
40	R Reagan	1	N	N
41	G HW Bush	4	N	N
42	W Clinton	0	Y	Y
43	G W Bush	5	Y	Y

 

There were a few caveats, of course, regarding half-brothers or living siblings, etc.

 

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July 16, 2004

 

Africa Roundup #1

 

Africa Roundup #2

 

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Is this the year? Are the indications such that there is hope we can start the crucial discussions in the African American community WITHOUT the political immaturity that has defined us for a couple of decades now? I think it is, although the results may not be so telling this year. But the change has begun and for that I am thankful. A sign of the change? John McWhorter. Agree or disagree with him, and I disagree that the NAACP has outlived it usefulness (it is a fraud, however, to call them non-partisan), he speaks a certain undeniable truth about the NAACP:

 

In fact, Bush ought not court an organization that considers him a racist, despises any race-sensitive proposal he offers and plays no serious role in addressing the problems of the community they purport to represent.

 

The NAACP is hardly the only political movement to have dissolved into posturing after the battles were largely won. What happens is that new leaders come along who are better suited to address the new problems.

 

For Bush to visit today's NAACP would be like dropping by a memorial. It would be a gesture, not an action. Black Americans deserve better.

 So true.

 

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Well, well. What do you know -- they've created an eye chart for Democrats re American reasons for the War in Iraq:

 

Eye Chart

 

That cartoon is from Henry Payne of the Detroit News; he has some very interesting work and you may review them here.

 

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Steven Den Beste gives new meaning to the problem I have with the Democrats, and the EU, via the old Can I / May I distinction (read the whole piece, not just this excerpt):

 

It's been decades since the "platform" drafted by each party actually made any difference, but sometimes they're amusing, and often they're highly revealing. Consider this news report about the Democrat's platform:

Half of its 35 pages are devoted to national security issues at a time when terror alerts and the war in Iraq dominate political discussion.

"This is a reflection of John Kerry's strength on these issues," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. "The Democrats are stronger than ever on national security issues and are going to the election confident of winning the debate on who can keep Americans safe."

The draft is laced with criticism of the Bush administration, which it said alienated allies, ignored U.S. military leaders' advice, and sent inadequate numbers of soldiers to Iraq "almost alone with the target squarely on their backs."

"They rush to force before exhausting diplomacy. They bully rather than persuade," it said. The Democrats said they would build an America that "extended a hand, not a fist."

The draft acknowledged disagreement within the party about whether U.S. troops should have invaded Iraq but said leaving before security is restored would make Iraq "a breeding ground for terror."

The platform called for expanding the U.S. active-duty military by 40,000 soldiers, upgrading military training and equipment and employing diplomacy to build "an America that is respected, not just feared."

"We will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake but we must enlist the support of those we need for ultimate victory," it said.

 

That last sentence is a straddle worthy of the master. It's also boilerplate. For what this really says is that the Democrats think it is more important what reputation the US has in "the world" than what the US accomplishes to reduce the threats we face. The goal of foreign policy should be to get the Europeans to pat us on the head and to praise us for being good boys and girls.

Who are these "allies" we've alienated? Who are "those we need for ultimate victory" we must enlist? It wasn't the UK, clearly, or Australia. It wasn't Japan. It wasn't the majority of the members of NATO, given that more than half of them have contributed troops to operations in Iraq. We got all them.

Er, um, France and Germany, mayhaps? Are those the allies to which they refer?

And what's this business about "extending a hand,not a fist"? What's with this dedication to persuasion instead of bullying? Sounds an awful lot like exactly the kind of foreign policy the EU, and many nations in Europe, have been relying on in the last couple of years, which have been notable failures.

The underlying message in all this has been consistent: Approval is more important than achievement. Awards are more important than accomplishments. Credentials are more important than knowledge and capabilities. Justification is more important than purpose.

Form is more important than substance. Motives are more important than results.

But you can't tell them that. They are far too continental and cosmopolitan (?) for that. Or they will insult you and say that you support this policy or the Republican Party simply because you want to "win" as opposed to being interested in doing what is "right," don't you know. I'm reminded of a John Derbyshire quote I read the other day:

 

It is highly characteristic of political ideologues that they believe “improving the social condition” can have only one possible meaning—theirs.

John Derbyshire,

National Review Online

February 1, 2001

 

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July 15, 2004

 

Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, speaks for America about our mission in Iraq:

 

I do not feel America is right to attempt to help spread democracy in the world because it is our way and therefore the right way. Nor do I think America should attempt to encourage it because we are Western and feel everyone should be Western. Not everyone should be Western, and not everything we do as a culture, a people or an international force is right.

 

Rather, we have a national-security obligation to foster democracy in the world because democracy tends to be the most peaceful form of government. Democracies tend to be slower than dictatorships to take up arms, to cross borders and attempt to subdue neighbors, to fight wars. They are on balance less likely to wreak violence upon the world because democracies are composed of voters many of whom are parents, especially mothers, who do not wish to see their sons go to war. Democracy is not only idealistic, it is practical.

 

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Thomas Sowell, speaking the truth that must find the light of day:

 

"Friends don't let friends drive drunk," a slogan says. You don't let anybody you care about destroy himself without warning him. Those who want to exempt blacks from criticism are not friends.

Criticism is part of the price of progress. Economics professor Walter Williams has said that a turning point in his education — and his life — came when a schoolteacher in the Philadelphia ghetto chewed him out for wasting his abilities on adolescent nonsense.

The criticism hurt — and there was no Barbara Ehrenreich there to defend him. So he turned his life around.

Little did I realize that he was just warming up, but he was. And then delivered this body blow:

 

Blacks have, in effect, been adopted as mascots by many white liberals. Mascots serve to symbolize something for others but the actual well-being of the mascot himself is seldom a major concern. Blacks have long been used by the left to indict American society.

Ssssssssssssssssssssmoking!

 

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Corrine, Corrine, Corrine. Come on, baby, ease up!

 

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Is it just me, or are those Red Stripe beer commercials a severe embarrassment to black people everywhere? Hurray beer HELL.

 

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Not only was George W. Bush correct in not going to the NAACP convention -- he should have told them to go straight to hell. It is a symptom of the disease that has afflicted African American intellectuals that one of our historic civil rights organizations allows its mission to be so badly bastardized. And are so resolutely proud of that fact.

 

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