My Friend the Leftist

My Friend the Leftist

Friendship. The word itself is strange, almost campy. What ship is this, that describes a man's relationship with other men? Aside from the ship, what indeed is the meaning of the word friend? An acquaintance? Or does the word imply a deeper bond, and how deep? I suspect that the meaning of friendship is different to each of us, as it can describe anything from the most frivolous acquaintanceship to the deepest pair bond between two men. For many men, a friend is someone with whom we would willingly walk into fire, should attempts at dissuasion fail. I put my own definition of the term up that high. Yet, do we have to agree with the personal philosophy of the man with whom we would walk into disaster?

I have a friend, we can call him Larry, with deeply held, deeply wrong, leftist beliefs. No bleeding heart on this guy, and a clearheaded view toward the racial divide in the country, and the world, as it really is. An entrepreneurial capitalist to boot. Yet this guy insists that America is always wrong. Not as a general rule, but case by case, every single time. He has never met a government program he didn't like, or that he thought was receiving enough money. Indeed, after over a half century roaming this planet, this fellow still thinks that government can be an effective force for positive change. And he sincerely believes that the craven fools who run under the democrat banner are inherently superior to the power mad hacks who self identify as republicans. The few truly committed leaders that emerge from time to time are dismissed as wrongheaded dreamers. To Larry, John Kasich was a fool, probably because he left politics just as his ability to wield power began to affect his thinking. Al Gore was a hero, not a self-serving power-craving sociopath who put his personal ambition above the nation's need to move ahead. Michael Moore produces documentaries, not propaganda with little regard for the truth. Al Franken might just save the world, if only enough people could be forced to listen to him, and Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar, even though Larry can not cite a single lie he ever told. Larry lives in the Bizarro World, where everything is reversed. Faced with Al Franken's ratings, he decides that Arbitron is a right-wing plot.

If you listen to talk radio, you will be familiar with the name Savage. Michael Savage is a reprehensible character who is difficult to listen to for very long. Very little of what he says is accurate, or makes much sense, but he nails a few ideas right on the head. The most correct thing that he says is that liberalism is a mental disease. That is so clearly true. It is the only explanation for Larry. Indeed, it explains a lot. It is not enough to say merely that lefties feel their politics, since many on the right also feel their own. And even touchy-feely bleeding heart liberals can explain and rationalize their misapprehension of world events. Few do, but some can. So, clearly it has been shown that they have a flaw in their logic circuits. Savage is close enough to the truth when he describes this as a mental disease. Larry is suffering from this mental disease.

So what can be done to alleviate Larry's suffering? He is resident in the intellectual New York City Kool-Aid world, so, since I am the only right-thinker he can get on the phone, he likes nothing better than to call me up and attempt to discuss at me the latest accusation that Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman have pre-masticated for his circle, and then he will anticipate my reaction. Me being me, however, I seldom answer with the preconceived response, which never sways him from his course. He will respond to whatever he has anticipated, and no demurrer on my part will get him to confront the facts of the case, whatever it is. In his world, American troops routinely practice torture and war crimes, Lt. Calley was never punished for his crimes at My Lai, no CEOs have been, or ever will be, sent to jail for stealing from or lying to the public, and, amazingly, Larry believes that an all-white jury would have acquitted OJ Simpson. In Larry's cracked calculus, Iraq=Vietnam, and wealth is a zero-sum game. Take from the rich and the poor will become richer. This from a guy who licenses biometric patents for a living. This from a guy who used to be a philosophy professor at a prestigious university. And somehow, this guy is still my friend. Go figure.

It seems to me that the best treatment for Larry's disease is to continue taking his calls, and treat his opinions as valid, even as he will not concede the same to mine. Continue pointing out the truth, and insisting on a certain rigor as concerns acceptable sources for facts (Mother Jones, The Utne Reader, and opinion columns are NOT acceptable sources for facts). Keep hoping that he will get better. And pray like crazy that no person like him ever achieves serious political power.

Republicans As Statists

Republicans As Statists

Statism may be too strong a term, so far, but there are ominous portents of a statist future for the Republican party. As Lord Acton warned repeatedly, the greater power a man or a group accretes to itself, the greater will become the use, and abuse, of that power. Today's Republican party, and President Bush, are a living embodiment of that idea, as they seek to award new entitlements and protections to the electorate in pursuit of the expansion of their incumbency and their sinecure.

I am an old style reactionary conservative, a Lincoln republican, with strong libertarian leanings. As late as Nixon's Vice presidency where, in his "Checkers" speech, he declaimed that his wife wore "a respectable Republican cloth coat," the Republicans were the party of the working man, and Republicans were the party that sought to create a smaller and less ambitious government. But today, what with the democrats retreating into the arms of an ever smaller coterie of elitists and leftists, the republicans have become emboldened to seek to extend their power into areas never before considered, and to serve their natural constituency less, as they turn to good old single interest politics. Their "big tent" has become more of a tent city, with the social conservatives, the neocons, and the libcons dwelling in their separate quarters in the republican campsite.

This phenomenon takes on a sinister meaning when we contemplate the inevitability of its continuing nature. Absent some major political cataclysm, the power of the national republicans shall grow in the years to come. Indeed, even if the democrats were not bent upon self-destruction, just the mechanics of electoral incumbency would not allow the left to take over the Senate for a decade. In the House, a sea change in political opinion would still not allow for a change in leadership for four years. And there is no chance of a democrat attaining the White House unless and until the war against us is over, or at least until the electorate feels safe from terror. And, just in case such a change in attitudes were possible, the national democrat party seems intent on making the public feel even less safe, showing no sign of a willingness to reverse course on that item any time soon.

So we find ourselves spiralling into the abyss, with a statist republican party "saving" us from an even more sinister leftism, and no end to it in view any time soon. It might be enough to induce one to consider suspending his blogging, in frustration at the futility of the debate, of the inability of an increasingly small minority in the middle to attract supporters from either side to come to their senses. As those on the right become more and more righteous, and those on the left more shrill and even more divorced from reality, one might consider leaving the debate.

But no. Now is not the time to withdraw from the ebb and flow of ideas. Not the time to retire. It is the time to reinvigorate, reenergize, and double, even treble one's efforts. There are those who have been satisfied to see the lethargy in this space of late, and have speculated that this site might go dark. Banish the thought. Expect the opposite. More, not less. More often. Verbose. Informed. Opinionated. Frequent. Right.

Congress Outdoes Itself

Congress Outdoes Itself

Amazingly, the United States Congress, an institution that has demonstrated that it has absolutely no ability to feel embarrassment, has gone over its previous level of self abasement, and has wasted an entire week on absolutely nothing of substance. Don't get me wrong though, as any week that the Congress does nothing is a week that the rest of us are protected from the evil that that institution does.

Of course, if you were Michael Schiavo, you would never agree that they have done nothing, in a week that saw them pass a bill of attainder that seeks to prevent Michael's wife from having her last wishes carried out. No matter that Terry Schiavo's brain has been replaced by spinal fluid, her parents' baseless hopes for her recovery, overruled by a process that has been reviewed by 17 judges in 6 courts, have been given new life by our fearless leaders in Washington. We can only pray to God that there is no longer a piece of her brain that survives that can perceive pain. Yet this exercise in the unfeeling abuse of power, masquerading as sensitivity, was only a side show to last week's display of craven pandering by the 535 power and ego driven fools.

No, the real show was the hearing, at the Committee of Government Reform, on Baseball. It is hard to understand what figleaf they plan to hide behind, but our legislators are threatening to legislate the use of performance enhancing drugs. No matter that most of these drugs are illegal already. No matter that baseball is an entertainment, rather than a strictly athletic, occupation. These brilliant thinkers are prepared to jump into Baseball with regulations, in order to slow down the advancement of the sport. I just have to ask: if Baseball wants to become more like professional wrestling, by what authority is the Congress empowered to stop them? Doesn't our constitution account for anything anymore? Exactly which enumerated power allows them to micromanage a SPORT?

Meanwhile, back in the real world, technology has advanced far beyond whatever it is that congress plans to regulate in any case. They can only regulate anabolic steroids but, while they were not looking, recombinant DNA technology has allowed pharmaceutical companies to manufacture metabolic steroids. That is, regular human chemicals without which we would die if we did not produce them in sufficient quantities. How do they propose to decide whether or not Mark McGuire has a naturally high testosterone level? And, how about the unmentionable: what if blacks really do naturally have more testosterone than whites? Does Congress want to stop white athletes from overcoming this racist bias?

And the steroid thing is passe anyway. New advancements in surgery have made inroads into sports, just as they have in other forms of the entertainment industry. If they make it illegal for a pitcher to have the "Tommy John" surgery, can Brittley Spears be banned from show biz because of her breast implants? Does Stallone's eye job make him inegible for an Oscar? Weighty questions for our deliberative body to sort out. I only hope that we can be protected from overly pretty, overly strong, and overly fast entertainers. What a farce!

Scrap the Violence Against Women Act

Scrap the Violence Against Women Act

It is now time to take a stand against the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). In an editorial at IFeminists.com, Ray Blumhorst puts the savage effects rendered by the gender feminists, using VAWA as fuel, into perspective.

The domestic violence industry clings tenaciously to a belief that it must manufacture more and more female victims to get more and more money. To do that, more and more men are fed into the domestic violence arrest system to meet the goals of the industry. Thanks to laws like "primary aggressor," and "mandatory arrest" the gender feminist trained police are coerced to manufacture, ignore, or destroy evidence to support their gender profiling prejudices. It appears from numerous sources the rate of false arrests is greater than one in three. False accusations can be just as devastating and occur much more frequently. In sum, it appears false accusations and perhaps false arrests exceed legitimate accusations and arrests, which are appalling by any measure.

While my regular readers will not find this surprising, the rest of the world is just beginning to come around to understanding just how badly radical feminists have abused our society in their lust for power.

Similarly Trudy W. Schuett has another editorial on the subject, also well worth reading. As she puts it:

Generally speaking, the radical elements who haven't yet realized their work is done are easily dismissed, and most often ignored. Malcontents in society will always be with us. It is only when we allow these malcontents to dictate public policy, and our government to fund programs to further their extremist philosophies that society puts itself in harm's way.

Now congress will have to consider whether to extend VAWA or not. It is to be hoped that the craven princelings on Capitol Hill can take their heads out of their asses long enough to hear both sides of this debate. When ideology trumps justice, freedom loses. When government mandates quotas of a maximum of 5% of arrestees can be women, when the science says the 50/50 is more like it, any idiot can see that we have a problem. Giving billions of dollars, and and the power that results in the incarceration of thousands of innocent men, to radical feminist lesbo-fascists, is a travesty that must be stopped. As I have detailed several times, single interest politics will result in this type of thing. After all, no one wants to condone violence against women, especially a craven vote seeking coward. But now that we have ten years of VAWA under our belt, and we have the opportunity to reexamine the results before reauthorization takes place, we owe it to our society to take a good look before we continue to move in this hateful, and counterproductive, direction.

Hat tip to Iguana at Silly Seattle for the link to the Schuett piece.

Why We Do the Things We Do

Why We Do the Things We Do

Since my teen years I have known that, to a large extent, we humans are passengers in our own bodies - that many if not most decisions we make are made on a level that we are not even aware of. The effect of the subconscious, the sense menory, and the eerie way that smell can catapult one back in time in an instant are all evidence of this. The autopilot function that allows us to walk and talk without ever thinking about our legs or our tongues is the clearest indication of this. Now U.S. News and World report has an article that sums up the state of our knowledge of that magnificent machine that is behind all of this. It

reveals an aspect of a rich inner life that is not a part of conscious, much less rational, thought. Today, long after Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the fact that much of what we do is determined by mysterious memories and emotional forces, the depths of the mind and the brain are being explored anew. "Most of what we do every minute of every day is unconscious, " says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Paul Whelan. "Life would be chaos if everything were on the forefront of our consciousness."

Fueled by powerful neuroimaging technology, questions about how we make snap decisions, why we feel uncomfortable without any obvious causes, what motivates us, and what satisfies us are being answered not through lying on a couch and exploring individual childhood miseries but by looking at neurons firing in particular parts of our brains. Hardly a week passes without the release of the results of a new study on these kinds of processes. And popular culture is so fascinated by neuroscience that Blink, journalist Malcolm Gladwell's exploration of "thinking without thinking," has remained on the bestseller lists for four weeks.

Goes rather well with last Friday's post, don't you think? Keep reading....

Modern Skulls House Stone Age Minds

Modern Skulls House Stone Age Minds

It has long been an interest of mine to develop a better understanding of how our biological inheritance affects our ability to thrive in this technological and crowded world. This has drawn me to blogs such as Gene Expression and Enlightened Caveman. Now political think tanks are getting into the act. Cato Institute has published a policy report based upon the study of evolutionary psychology, entitled Capitalism and Human Nature, which attempts to reconcile our hunter-gatherer origins and our therefore primitive mentation with our ability to interact on a global level with the rest of the human race. The report reviews recent research in evolutionary psychology, which it describes as a field of science that "specializes in uncovering the truth about human nature."

Pointing out that human nature is absolutely incompatible with socialism is easy enough, even without the aid of peer-reviewed research (we have the mountains of corpses to prove it), but applying those same findings to a quest to understand how compatible our minds might be with a global free market is a bit more difficult. What we can not easily understand can be seen this way, thus:

Our zero-sum mentality makes it hard for us to understand how trade, innovation, and investment can increase the amount of total wealth. We are thus ill-equipped to easily understand our own economic system.

Anyone who has read the scribblings of economists, who devote their lives to the understanding of this "science," has realized that no two economists can agree on anything more than grand principles, and there is a huge amount of argument even at that level. Science can allude to a certain hopelessness inherent in progressivism, as in:

The shape of society is constrained by our evolved nature. Remaking humanity through politics is a biological impossibility.

But progress we shall, indeed we must, so gainsaying the direction in which leftists wish to take our society is not necessarily going to point to the true direction the human race, and American society, should take. It does provide food for thought, however, and it would be wonderful if more of our public policy were to conform to what is known about human propensities and abilities, rather than the current state of our legislation, which more often defies human nature, and attempts to change it, rather than trying to work with the raw material of the human mind.

We are what we are, and not some progressive construct of what we wish we were. Political correctness stands in direct opposition to progress, which is directly opposite to what its promoters claim. Human knowledge is ill-served by denial of, say, the cannibalism of the Anasazi, or refusal to recognize the nature of Homosexuality. Refusal to allow the study of, and understanding of, whatever it is that impairs many African-Americans from succeeding in our society does not help them. Indeed, it holds them in bondage to false ideas, and encourages the destruction and refabrication of the ideas of Martin Luther King, among others, in a mad attempt to avoid embarrassment. The continued attempts to redistribute wealth similarly shows a denial of human nature, as well as a poor understanding of the economics of wealth creation. The plain truth, that wealth is not a zero-sum game, seems to be hidden from these "thinkers," and the facts of the tension between our charitable nature and our resistance to coercion are denied as well. The current debate over Social security is a debate between those who want power over their fellows, and is not at all about providing for the elders of our society.

Until public policy reflects an understanding of the good, as well as the bad, in our natures, the personal freedom forseen by our nation's founders will continue to be elusive. Better understanding of human nature, and thus what will work, is the key, and the Cato piece is a great step forward. Too bad almost no one will read it. But it is a sign of better days ahead.

Hat tip to Enlightened Caveman for the link to the Cato piece.

Criminalizing Fantasy

In a further demonstration that the government is truly out of control, Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger is apparently attracting a lot of positive response to his attempt to extend the already foolish statutes against suicide to a ban on the mere discussion of, and fantasy concerning, suicide. I have (so far) found no news items suggesting that this action is overstepping the boundaries of the law, giving me more reason to believe that I have been right all along, that almost everyone can clearly see the Emperor's new clothes, and is not merely reticent about discussing their lack.

A sample of the news coverage, "Man Allegedly Sought Suicide Pacts for Years", from the Washington Post, seems to me to allege no crime that has been committed. Even a conspiracy charge requires that at least one act in furtherance of the commission of a crime must be performed before the conspiracy becomes a criminal act. Yet, incredibly, it seems that the mere act of clicking the "send" button in a chat room transforms conversation about suicide into a crime. This completes the realization of the aim of those who would seek to make illegal mere unpopular speech. If this prosecution succeeds, all internet communicators will have a far heavier burden to carry. But. Far more important is the silence. Why are not civil liberties activists of all stripes screaming about this? Is it because of the supposed victim status of the so-called scheme's so-called participants?

Where does it stop? If a man can not speak to strangers about fantasy hangings that will noy take place over non-existent beams in his trailer home, after they discuss sex acts that will never be performed, at what point does harmless banter become an actionable crime? This is very troubling to me, mostly because it does not seem to trouble anybody else.

Darfur Is No Genocide Says UN

Darfur Is No Genocide Says UN

One of the best essayists today is Mark Steyn, whose insights and observations never fail to make one laugh as he skewers the pompous and powerful. And we have to laugh, or we will never stop crying. Just today a government report finds that gun laws have no effect on crime, but goes on to conclude that its conclusions are no reason to change anything. I expect that Steyn will have something to say about that presently, but today's piece is about the U.N. Oil for Food Scandal. While he covers that travesty with a completeness and brevity at the same time, what really got me going was a little bon mot at the end, about something entirely different. he sums up the transnational mindset - and standard operating procedure - perfectly

If Paul Volcker's preliminary report on Oil-for-Food dealt with the organisation's unofficial interests, the UN's other report of the week accurately captured their blithe insouciance to their official one. As you may have noticed, the good people of Darfur have been fortunate enough not to attract the attention of the arrogant cowboy unilateralist Bush and have instead fallen under the care of the Polly Toynbee-Clare Short-approved multilateral compassion set. So, after months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan managed to persuade the UN to set up a committee to look into what's going on in Darfur. They've just reported back that it's not genocide.

That's great news, isn't it? For as yet another Annan-appointed UN committee boldly declared in December: "Genocide anywhere is a threat to the security of all and should never be tolerated." So thank goodness this isn't genocide. Instead, it's just 70,000 corpses who all happen to be from the same ethnic group – which means the UN can go on tolerating it until everyone's dead, and Polly and Clare don't have to worry their pretty little heads about it.

Isn't that the truth? Great stuff. Too bad that the black Africans in Darfur can not laugh, and may even be fresh out of tears. But if we can not lampoon those who could make a difference to them, but refuse to, nothing will ever change.

Having it Both Ways

In a telling piece of journalism, the Washington Post today reveals some of the rank hypocrisy of which our elected officials are capable. They criticize Bush for spending too much money, and running deficits, then, when he shows fiscal discipline, they attempt to destroy those efforts. You may laugh or you may cry, but the reaction of the democrats to this budget proposal are beneath contempt. In fact, they are beneath comment. Anyone with his or her brain plugged in can fisk this document. And, it is called a NEWS article! Read it and weep.

UPDATE - Just in case you think I'm being too hard on WaPo, take a look at the same story, without editorial content masquerading as news.

Dems Moving Left, Again

So now the waiting is over, and we know that the democrat party has no intention of taking any substantive steps toward reversing course and moving toward the middle politically. It seems that they have settled on Howard Dean as their standard bearer. Just as the choice of Terry McAuliffe moved them toward the left, Dean will move them more so. Even as a reactionary libertarian conservative like me was hoping that the opposition party would once again become relevant, they push inexorably toward obscurity. Perhaps this is a good thing. Maybe this will make room for a truly conservative party to come to the fore. The only problem with this, there IS no conservative party available to do so, unless you consider the isolationist Libertarian Party conservative. Me, I consider them a utopian party, and thus as capable of achieving a majority as the communists. For a majority party, you need a big tent, and the Libertarians are (mostly) true believers, and thus are fighting to have the smallest tent possible.

In national politics, single-interest coalitions beat out ideology every time. That is why the Republicans are the majority now, and the Democrats are sinking. The more ideological they get, the happier their base will be, the their relevance to our national polity will decrease. What will sustain them when they no longer have Bush to kick around? Their coalition of academics, labor movement socialists, angry masculine women, journalists, and artists is a mile wide and paper thin. Who listens to those people anyway?

We're Back

We're Back

Happy New Year! It has been a long vacation for us, and it is good to be back at home at last. Folks here in Seattle are unhappy about the mid-sixties temperatures, which actually fit right in with their mid-sixties politics, as it seems to show them that the globe is actually warming. The fifty two below zero readings in Minnesota do not fit their theory, but environmentalists are never going to allow mere facts to hinder a good supposition. The further fact that these ultra-low temperatures occurred in a town called Embarrass is also lost on these people, since irony is another thing that they never seem to get.

Meanwhile, I have been steaming for the last couple of weeks over the response to the Tsunami. It would be hard to market a work of fiction in which an earthquake's sequelae are blamed on a political leader in a nation six thousand miles away, yet that is exactly what has happened. First Bush didn't do enough, then he didn't do it fast enough, then he did it in the wrong way (W stands for wrong!). I can forgive the political class from spinning and hyping the story, but what about the media solons, who so recently were wringing their hands over their fading influence. Don't they realize that their influence is fading precisely because they can no longer be trusted to get the most basic facts straight?

Last week it seemed that every news outlet was declaring that the death toll in the tsunami was the "greatest loss of human life in a natural disaster in human history." A quick glance at a compendium of disasters shows that Bangladesh alone has had two greater disasters since 1970, and if we include famine, this tsunami is an order of magnitude short of being on the all-time greatest list. This is the sad truth: the so-called NEWS has degenerated into entertainment, at least in its broadcast form. We can get as much accurate fact from Rush Limbaugh as we can get from CBS News. I have long said in this space that the "Common Knowledge" is always wrong. I must now report that the broadcast news is not much more accurate than that. File this under sad but true.

Making A Federal Case Out of Almost Everything

It's time to rediscover constitutional limits

Guest Post by Gene Healy

"Don't make a federal case out of it," we used to tell people who blew things out of proportion. But that phrase is quickly losing its bite as the federal government expands its jurisdiction to every area of American life.

Responding to the Barry Bonds-Jason Giambi steroid scandal, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) recently threatened to bring the federal hammer down on Major League Baseball: "Major-league baseball players and owners should meet immediately to enact the standards that apply to the minor leagues, and if they don't, I will have to introduce legislation that says professional sports will have minimum standards for testing," McCain said on December 3rd. (Up next, perhaps, legislation to revoke the American League's designated hitter rule.)

The week before McCain issued his threat, the Justice Department fought in the Supreme Court to maintain the right to jail sick people taking marijuana on the advice of their doctors and with the approval of their state government. On November 29, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Ashcroft v. Raich, a case involving two desperately ill women who use marijuana and seek protection from prosecution under federal drug laws. Acting solicitor general Paul Clement told the Court that medicine grown in one's own backyard for home consumption was a national matter, subject to Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce—despite the fact that there is nothing remotely commercial or interstate about the conduct at issue.

Those are just two recent examples of a federal government that views its jurisdiction as limitless. That's a view quite at odds with the one held by the Constitution's Framers. The document they drafted envisioned a federal government focused on national issues, such as "war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce," in Madison's words. Even the most devoted advocate of national power, Alexander Hamilton, agreed, explaining in Federalist 17 that under the Constitution, "the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice" would be left to the states.

We've drifted far from that understanding. Congress's power to "regulate Commerce...among the states," which was designed to eliminate state-level trade barriers, has become a limitless font of federal power, used to regulate or criminalize behavior better left to the states or the civil law.

With commerce clause limits eviscerated, almost anything can be a federal crime. We've gone from a Constitution that mentions only three federal crimes (treason, piracy, and counterfeiting) to a federal criminal code with over 4,000 separate offenses, some of them stunningly trivial. In 2002, President Bush signed legislation making it a federal crime to move birds across state lines to engage in fights. The ban on cockfighting joined such notable federal crimes as interstate transport of unlicensed dentures (punishable by up to a year in prison), tampering with an odometer (up to three years), and pretending to be a member of the 4-H Club (up to six months). These and other offenses larded throughout the U.S. code could make for an interesting conversation with one's cellmate: "What are you in for, kid?"

But out-of-control federalization is only rarely amusing. It brings serious costs. In addition to the trivial crimes mentioned above, Congress has federalized a host of ordinary street crimes already covered by state criminal codes, crimes like arson, carjacking, and gun possession by felons. Shunting these cases into federal court causes huge delays to civil litigants and unsustainable pressure on the federal courts. Chief Justice Rehnquist has characterized the result as "a crisis in workload." Forcing the federal courts to handle workaday criminal matters crowds out civil suits and leads to huge delays for civil litigants because criminal defendants have a constitutional right to a speedy trial and everyone else has to wait in line.

Moreover, a federal government focused on everything from cockfighting to steroid use is a federal government that's not focused on truly national issues. Case in point: In the months leading up to the September 11 attacks the FBI was engaged in an 18-month-long sting operation at a brothel in New Orleans that netted 12 prostitutes. September 11 should have concentrated the mind wonderfully as to proper federal priorities, yet federal law enforcement to this day continues to behave like the local vice squad.

But the most important costs of overfederalization are the costs to the rule of law. A federal criminal code that covers everything essentially delegates to prosecutors and police the power to pick targets they think they should get rather than offenses that need to be prosecuted—leaving everyone at risk. That is unacceptable in a country that still considers itself a government of laws and not of men. It's well past time we rediscovered the wisdom of constitutional limits.

Gene Healy is senior editor at the Cato Institute, and editor of the new book Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything. This essay originally appeared at Reason Online

Question Authority

Guest post by John R. Guardiano

To the media, it was a dramatic revelation of Bush administration hypocrisy and incompetence: A lowly American GI courageously speaks truth to power, thus showing that the emperor has no clothes. But to this Marine veteran of the Iraq war, the hullabaloo over Army Spc. Thomas J. Wilson's question reveals far more about media bias, prejudice and ignorance than it does about the U.S. military and Iraq.

Spc. Wilson asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld why, nearly two years after the start of the war, his unit still has too few "up-armored" humvees. The media were surprised that an enlisted man would ask so direct and pointed a question of the Pentagon's highest official. I wasn't.

I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve after Sept. 11, 2001, and served in Iraq in 2003. Throughout boot camp, combat training and subsequent preparation for war, my instructors always stressed the importance of independent thinking and initiative. Obviously, when you're in the middle of a firefight, you cannot--and must not--second-guess split-second command decisions. However, when preparing for war, thoughtful and considered questions are not only tolerated; they are encouraged--even demanded, I found.

As one of my combat instructors told us: "Marines, you're more likely to die from someone doing something stupid than because the enemy is skilled and ingenious. So make sure you've thought things through and that everyone's on the same page. Be polite. Be tactful. But don't be afraid to ask questions."

I soon discovered that this command to think and to ask questions wasn't mere rhetoric. I was serving with the First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment at an abandoned pistol factory in Al Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. Every three weeks or so, we were visited by Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who was then commanding the First Marine Division in Iraq.

Gen. Mattis is a Marine's Marine, a true warrior who speaks bluntly and candidly, without being bound by the constraints of political correctness. For well over an hour, on a routine and regular basis, the general would gather together his Marines and field questions. Nothing was out of bounds. The event was entirely democratic and thoroughly American--though marked by standard military etiquette and respect for rank. Thus, newsmen and commentators who fear "retribution" against Spc. Wilson haven't a clue as to what the U.S. military is all about. Spc. Wilson asked a tough but fair question; however, for any U.S. serviceman who's ever been to war, this was hardly surprising.

Nor does his question demonstrate, as some have argued, that the Iraq war was ill-conceived or poorly planned. War is, by its very nature, surprising and unpredictable; it forces us to adapt and to be innovative. Armchair "experts" notwithstanding, the fact is no one anticipated the Baathist-Sunni insurgency, certainly not the U.S. military. We all expected to knock off Saddam Hussein and his elite Republican Guard and then head home in time for the July 4 celebrations. That's why, when I deployed to Iraq in 2003, I traveled throughout the country in a standard canvas humvee with no special armor. Nor did I have any special body vest or protection.

I thought nothing of this at the time and still don't. My team went as far north as Baghdad, but we were situated mainly south of the Sunni Triangle, in predominantly Shiite Iraq. Throughout our entire time there, the Iraqis welcomed us as liberators. We were well prepared for the threat as it then existed and as we understood it.

But when my old Marine Corps reserve unit redeployed to Iraq in September, it did so with fully armored vehicles, new sappy plated vests and special goggles--all designed to protect against shrapnel and improvised explosive devices. That's because the unit was deploying to Fallujah, and the threat there was different from what we had faced in southern, Shiite Iraq.

This type of change and adaptation has occurred in all wars from time immemorial. It reflects not poor planning but the unpredictable nature of war. That's why the Defense Department has been moving quickly to up-armor its humvees, producing nearly 400 such vehicles a month, up from 30 a month in August 2003, according to Army Lt. Gen. R. Steven Whitcomb.

The U.S. military ultimately wants 8,100 up-armored humvees versus the nearly 6,000 such vehicles that it has currently, Gen. Whitcomb told reporters last week. Moreover, according to the Army vice chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the military long ago embarked on a "Manhattan-like project" to remotely jam IEDs with radio sensors.

If you're an American soldier or Marine whose life is on the line now, clearly that's not good enough. On the other hand, it simply isn't true that U.S. military leaders have callously ignored the troops' request for up-armored vehicles and other protective equipment. In fact, most of our troops in Iraq have up-armored vehicles, and units there take force protection quite seriously.

Delays ought to be blamed on the military bureaucracy, which Secretary Rumsfeld has been trying to reform. Indeed, that's what military transformation--a Rumsfeld priority--is all about. Yet, many of the same people who are most vociferously denouncing the lack of up-armored humvees in Iraq also fight military reform tooth and nail.

Example: When the Army decided last winter to cancel development of its Cold War relic Comanche helicopter, Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, immediately took to the barricades. "It simply doesn't make sense to pull the plug on the Comanche," Mr. Dodd said. "Obviously, this will not be an easy fight, but I intend to work with other members of the Connecticut congressional delegation to seek to retain the Comanche as part of our military arsenal."

It didn't seem to matter to Mr. Dodd that the Comanche was a $39-billion boondoggle that the Army didn't want because the aircraft isn't suitable for 21st-century urban warfare. Nor did Mr. Dodd seem to care that much of the displaced Comanche money would be used to equip existing Army helicopters with new countermeasure systems necessary to neutralize the ubiquitous threat posed by rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, and man-portable air-defense systems, all of which are omnipresent in Iraq.

Yet Mr. Dodd, who has never been a champion of big defense budgets, now has the chutzpah to lecture Mr. Rumsfeld about the need to "spare no expense to ensure the safety of our troops, particularly as they confront a hostile insurgency and roadside bombs throughout Iraq." Mr. Dodd says Mr. Rumsfeld's response to Spec. Wilson--"You go to war with the Army you have"--is "utterly unacceptable. Mr. Secretary," he writes, "our troops go to war with the Army that our nation's leaders provide."

Quite true--and Mr.. Dodd is one of those leaders.

Nor does the entire hullabaloo concerning up-armored humvees show, as some commentators contest, that U.S. troops lack confidence in their military and civilian leaders. The reality is that troop morale is consistently high.

Of course, American soldiers and Marines yearn to come home; it is not in our nature to colonize or occupy a country. By the same token, however, most U.S. troops take understandable pride in a job well done. They are pleased to have the historic chance to serve and to practice, in a real-world operation, that which they have been training for all these many years. That's why re-enlistment rates are high.

As U.S. Central Commander Gen. John Abizaid told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" Sept. 26: "The constant drumbeat in Washington of a war that is being lost, that can't be won, of a resistance that is out of control, simply does not square with the facts on the ground." In fact, the vast majority of Iraq is not a war zone; it is peaceful, tranquil and doing surprisingly well. I refer specifically to the Shiite south. The Kurdish north, too, is doing relatively well, despite the recent upsurge of violence in Mosul.

"So is this fight in the Middle East worth fighting?" the general said to Mr. Russert. "Absolutely," he said. "In my mind, and in the minds of our young people that are out here fighting and sacrificing, it's absolutely worth it."

Of course you won't hear any of this in many news articles or broadcasts. The media long ago decided that its job was to put a negative slant on all things Iraq. Truth is, as they say, the first casualty of war.

Mr. Guardiano is an Arlington, Va.-based journalist who served in Iraq in 2003 as a field radio operator with the U.S. Marine Corps' Fourth Civil Affairs Group.

My Body is My Own (Isn't it?)

My Body is My Own (Isn't it?)

I wanted to post something early this morning, as part of my new plan for world domination, but I have held off, since my editorial board has been having a difficult time agreeing on a topic. While my editors have had quite a few suggestions, my bullheaded writing staff can not get off this one thing, the single most bothersome thing that we have heard since Friday. The greatest threat to our republic. The most irksome task that our overreaching government is preparing to undertake.

Nothing bothers me more than the increasing intrusiveness of our government, the erosion that is occurring in our constitutional protection. The government itself, the small people who legislate and execute, prosecute and judge, do about what one would expect. They are human beings, after all, and therefore their selfishness and venality, their grasping and subordination to the grasping for power and wealth, are to be expected. Humans all have feet of clay, and very few of us are large enough of soul to rise above our essential ape-ness. No, that is not the problem. My problem today, and every day, really, is the credulous, sheeplike quality We the People exhibit when our governors make ready to take yet another iota of power from us. With our opinion leaders leading the charge over the cliff like Lemmings, we acquiesce to almost all of the inroads into our personal rights that the government attempts. Power is a zero-sum game, and each iota of power that we grant to the government is one we have lost, until we may have precious few freedoms left. We have lost so much already, we can not afford to lose more. Each new instance is seen as such a little thing, yet the addition of them all amounts to a terrible chasm between our constitutionally mandated position on the spectrum of power, and the puny position that we inhabit today.

I am a child of the sixties, and can testify that, by 1969, freedom was breaking out all over. We could say whatever we wanted, live wherever we wanted, and if it pleased a homeowner, he could cut down the tree on his front lawn. But, just then, even as we were at our pinnacle of reclaiming our personal power, the culture of victimhood, and the nanny state, swung into the ascendency. Each little inroad seemed small to most of us at the time, yet the aggregate result has been overwhelming. Hate speech laws. Special treatment for violence, when it was conducted against women. The Supreme Court of the land confirming that a plant in our garden is a threat to interstate commerce, since, after all, one might hurt oneself thereby. The area of government applying the interstate commerce clause alone has been used to remove more of our personal freedom and power over ourselves than two world wars. Almost a century ago, when government sought to impinge upon our freedom, they sought shelter in our constitution, asking for, and receiving, constitutional amandments in order to institute the income tax, or the prohibition against alcohol. But they have become so brazen that they do not seek such authorization when they seek to diminish us any more. Or, when an amendment fails, or seems to be unwinnable, they merely pass a law. We, usually, acquiesce. Then the Supreme Court says Amen.

On Friday, Barry Bonds, perhaps the greatest living baseball player, was revealed to have made some admissions about the use of performance enhancing drugs. On Sunday, Senator John McCain proposed a sweeping new legislative incursion into the regulation of baseball. And no respected commentator, that I have heard so far, has offerred a word in opposition. After all, steroids are bad, aren't they? Violence against women is bad too, isn't it? Hate speech is bad as well - who could argue against that? I suppose that, as the sheep walk calmly into the abbatoir, they can see no harm in merely walking up a ramp.

There are two issues involved here. One is, steroids are bad for you. While there is an argument to be made that it is anabolic steroids that are dangerous, and that the metabolic steroids, which have only recently become available in quantity and at a low price, prescribed and monitored by a physician, might not be, but I will concede the point: Steroids are bad. Next item, children should be protected from themselves in a manner that adults might not be forced to allow. Again, while I could put up a spirited argument in opposition, I will stipulate this point as well. Children should be protected from themselves. Yet, incredibly, these are the pegs that will drive the debate toward federal government intrusion into the administration of a professional sport. I find that stunning.

Take a fully grown man, whose performance in college sports has placed him in a position to make millions of dollars per year in his business. Today, government allows this man to make a decision to undertake some personal risk in order to further his career. His body is his own. It is perfectly legal today for this man to have his doctor administer Human Testosterone of Human Growth Hormone. He will have an enhanced ability to build muscle mass, and an increase in his aggressiveness. Now along comes government, that seeks to insert itself into this doctor-patient relationship. As Big Brother rattles his sword, expect baseball to cringe in fear, and modify its rules to keep the beast at bay. Yet almost no one sees the danger.

There are many who will say that this is an unimportant new government incursion into our rights. They will say, if they are knowledgeable enough, that the government already legislates and regulates the prescription of Methadone, when administered to addicts. (With gruesome results. For more reading on the politics of methadone, read this) But professional athletes are not addicts, nor are they guilty of criminal behavior, necessarily. At the very least what has been proposed is a usurpation of the doctor-patient relationship in a setting totally without a criminal element. As with violence against women, all the acts proposed to be made criminal acts are already illegal. And, we do not yet know what else will be added to the legislation, what incursion into our privacy will be made. If we even have any privacy left. There are those who have already thrown in the towel, who say that all of our privacy is gone. That is what they say about the Patriot Act, and NASPER (see post below, Freedom Hijacked). But that is demonstrably untrue, as, if it were true, there would be no need for this new law. There are those who say that this will become moot, as Baseball will change its rules. But any change will be made in the shadow of this threat from government, which is even more insidious. There is no appeal from a settlement. No judicial oversight, no constitutional test. While I would not expect any protection from the Supremes on this one, they might surprise me. But they will not get the chance thus time, if Baseball caves in to the pressure.

Finally, there are those who will say that good ethics or morals would obviate the need for government to intervene. But that is the very heart of this thing. It used to be that we could use ethics and morals as a guide to our behavior. No more. If you remember the Clinton impeachment debate, you will recall that the legality of his actions were the limits that he placed upon himself, and the impeachers in Congress respected those limits. We have entered an age where the law is the arbiter of behavior. I long for a world where men and women placed limits upon themselves that were far stricter than mere law would mandate. Today we have a world where the student who fails to cheat in school is the exception, and our media have becomed coarsened to anything resembling good taste or modesty. In such a world, it is argued, the law must expand to encompass more of human interaction. And that is truly frightening. And, what with the social conservatives in the ascendancy, it will be getting worse.

Drug War Failure

Drug War Failure

Another study has been released that shows that our benighted policy on drug consumption has failed, according to the Washington Times. While this can not be surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, this study points out that both availability (up) and price (down) are going in the opposite direction to what the entire War on (some) Drugs has promised:

The report conducted by the Washington Office on Latin America, a non-governmental organization that has the stated goal of trying to "reorient U.S. drug control policy to the region," concludes that U.S. policy geared toward "reducing drug abuse and availability in the United States" from a "supply-reduction model does not work."

Citing falling wholesale and retail cocaine and heroin prices and collateral damage suffered in Latin American countries as a result of U.S. anti-drug policy, Joy Olson, executive director of WOLA, said, "We've been tough on drugs, now it's time to get smart on drugs."

But the most disturbing part of all of this is the chilling effect that the war has had on our government's relationship with the truth. As the Times says:

The three-year study, "Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The Impact of U.S. Policy," includes independently recorded data and unreleased studies carried out by the Rand Corporation for the Office of National Drug Control Policy that were leaked to WOLA by a congressional office, according to John Walsh, WOLA senior associate for the Andes and drug policy.

Walsh and a senior adviser at the ONDCP confirmed the initial report had been submitted to the office in spring 2004 but has not yet been released.

When our government hides and obfuscates the truth, commissions and then 86s a study critical of one of its policies, the entire fabric of our democracy is diminished. When our "Drug Czar" refuses to debate, or even take questions from any journalist who has not been previously vetted by his department, we slip further down the slope into unresponsive, and unrepresentative government.

If such a debate would be held, any zero base thinker would first examine the very basis of our policy, before delving into the arcana of its implementation:

Over the last 25 years U.S. policy has tried to attack the war on drugs from a supply-side perspective. Through the eradication of coca crops in producing countries, interdicting drug shipments to the United States and jailing drug offenders, authorities were hoping to significantly drive up the cost of cocaine and heroin -- thus reducing cocaine's economic appeal to potential users.

However, the attempted siphoning of the supply side has lowered street prices and increased the number of incarcerated drug offenders, driving up government spending, without significantly reducing the amount of drug flow, the study's findings show.

Data compiled by WOLA show that since 1981 the retail price for 2 grams of cocaine went from $544.59 to $106.54 in 2003. Retail heroin prices mirrored the decline in cocaine prices, falling from $1,974.49 to $361.95 during the period.

Walsh noted that "price estimates are manifestations of supply and demand" and thus are the most accurate indicators to "determine what is coming in."

The number of incarcerated drug offenders rose from 45,272 to 480,519 from 1981 to 2002, and government spending on overseas supply control rose from $373.9 million to $3.6 billion from 1981 to 2004.

Once again, government has failed to observe the emperor's new clothes. That is, when they seek to drive up the cost, they are, if successful, driving up the profit motive for the criminals who pursue this business. When they are unsuccessful, as in the present instance, they lower the barriers to entry into the business. Thus there are ever more young recruits into this trade.

This is enough to make one tear one's hair out. The government claims to seek to make drug abuse more rare. Instead, they create a new criminal class. Now that the failure of their policy becomes more and more clear, they seek to hide the evidence. Meanwhile, collateral damage (see yesterday's post, below) increases, and government, rather than attempting to remedy the problem, merely increases the budget of the failed bureaucracy. For just one instance of this, the government has instituted a policy of spraying poison on the Colombian and Bolivian hillsides where coca cultivation is believed to take place. At first, the poison kills everything, both the drug crop and any legal crop that is grown in the area dies. That is bad enough, but recent reports show that the growers have developed poison resistant plants, so the spraying has the effect of performing the weeding that the illicit growers previously have had to do themselves. Government's answer? Increase spraying 50%.

When our government decided to ban alcohol, they figured that they would need a constitutional amendment to accomplish this legally. When they sought to ban marijuana, they levied a tax. But over the years, they passed ever more restrictive legislation, with little public complaint. Now, when a case against any little element of this anti-drug approach makes it to the Supreme Court, the government's response is to claim that, if the supremes restrict the government's little war, it would be an intolerable burden on the judiciary, as hundreds of thousands of appeals might be filed. In the case argued Monday, in which two women are accused of growing a few marijuana plants for their own use, the government claimed that this activity interferes with interstate commerce, since otherwise they would have to buy regular prescriptions. (That's after the bit where they claimed that marijuana has no efficacy as a medicine in the first place.) Under this analysis, anything at all that a citizen does interferes with interstate commerce. All choices are economic to an economist. Getting married reduces the profits of pimps. Going to the bathroom spurs sales of toilet paper. If interstate commerce can be construed this broadly, then there is no hope left for the enumerated powers set forth in our constitution.

It would seem that the mendacity of our government knows few if any boundaries. They pursue a blatantly unconstitutional "war," and lie to protect their right to continue to do so. They silence debate, and then hide studies and polls that show that their policy is not only ineffective, but unpopular. We are ruled by two parties whose main differences are in the personalities of the candidates, rather than any substantive policy split. Didn't Kerry just run a campaign where he said that he would have done exactly what Bush has done, only better? At some point the people must demand that their government be responsive to them. Or not.

Freedom Hijacked - Again

Freedom Hijacked - Again

In their never ending campaign to make the constitution irrelevant, our government is putting yet another nail in the coffin of our freedom, with almost no mention in the press. Using the dubious procedure of a voice vote in a lame duck session - which gives every single legislator the ability to deny his vote, if and when the voters turn against this benighted law - the House has already passed, and the Senate is about to pass, the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act, or NASPER, H.R. 3015.

This act will give to the government easy access to the medical records of any citizen who takes any controlled substance. While pain medications are the stated target of this new law, antidepressant and other drugs used in the treatment of mental distress and illness, not to mention medically authorized marijuana, are all included. The act provides that any doctor prescribing, and any provider dispensing any of these medicines must report, within one week, the name, address, and telephone number of the patient receiving these substances. Normal constitutionally mandated controls on search and seizure are thus not applicable. No judge need issue a warrant, nor must any law enforcement person show probable cause, not even reasonable suspicion, that any law has been violated. Mere curiosity on the part of law enforcement would appear to be allowed, under the language of the statute.

(2) any local, State, or Federal law enforcement, narcotics control, licensure, disciplinary, or program authority, who certifies, under the procedures determined by the State, that the requested information is related to an individual investigation or proceeding involving the unlawful diversion or misuse of a schedule II, III, or IV substance, and such information will further the purpose of the investigation or assist in the proceeding;

(3) any agent of the Department of Health and Human Services, a State medicaid program, a State health department, or the Drug Enforcement Administration who certifies that the requested information is necessary for research to be conducted by such department, program, or administration, respectively, and the intended purpose of the research is related to a function committed to such department, program, or administration by law that is not investigative in nature

This is nothing more than an outrageous continuation on the Justice department's War on Citizens in Pain and the Doctors Who Treat Them. Sneaking it in under the conditions of a voice vote in a lame duck session shows what law enforcement usually refers to as "awareness of guilt." Just as O.J. or Peterson running for the border shows that they know that they are guilty, legislators sneaking this vote in anonymously shows that they are unwilling to put their names to it. Oh, quite a few will be proud to tell their constituencies that they voted for this monstrous invasion - not of privacy, but of a patient in pain's very ability to get the medication that he or she needs to survive. But, the rest of our brave Congressmen will be able to deny that they were even in the House when the vote took place. And, the Senate has decided to use the very same sleazy trick when the vote comes up in the next month or so. Don't just take my word for it, ask a doctor:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), a physician, calls NASPER, a.k.a. HR 3015, "yet another unjustifiable attempt by the federal government to use the war on drugs as an excuse for invading the privacy and liberties of the American people and for expanding the federal government's disastrous micromanagement of medical care." He argues that the bill violates the Fourth Amendment, since it "authorizes the use and disclosure of identifiable health information for law enforcement purposes without the patient's knowledge or consent, without probable cause to believe a crime has been committed and without obtaining a search warrant."

This bill is aimed at creating a national system in which the government is constantly looking over doctors' shoulders as they write prescriptions, looking for signs of nonmedical use. Such a system would magnify the chilling effect that the government's second-guessing has on pain treatment while sacrificing patient privacy for the sake of the war on drugs.

As a chronic pain patient myself, I can attest to the difficulty of even finding a physician willing to prescribe these substances. Getting the proper dosage of them is impossible, at least for me. My doctor is candid with me in discussing her concerns, and she is quite clear that, if not for the DEA looking over her shoulder, she would prescribe the proper dose. Her problem is that federal agants, who have absolutely no medical training, make decisions on the correctness of her treatment of her chronic pain patients, and her license, even her very freedom is constantly on the line. Thank God that my MRI clearly shows my condition. Many pain patients have pain that does not show up on the diagnostic film, and therefore get no medication at all. Some, very few, doctors are willing to prescribe for these patients, and quite a few have landed in prison for prescribing more Percocets than a DEA agent and an Assistant U.S. Attorney believes to be the correct amount. So I make do, and would surely be in a bad way if I could not get my disease medicated. In fact, untreated and undertreated chronic pain is one of the leading causes of suicide.

Making this information so easily available will absolutely have a chilling affect on the prescribing activities of most doctors. If it passes, look for the immediate effect of dentists prescribing only two days worth of painkillers, rather than the three or four that is usual, in order to get under the reporting requirements. If you are one who believes that the War on (some) Drugs makes this law a reasonable intrusion into our privacy, may God have mercy on you if you ever develop chronic pain. If you suffer from depression and are medicated for it, prepare for this information about you to become available to prospective employers and nosy neighbors. If you are taking medically authorized marijuana, expect the D.A.R.E. officer to reveal this to your kids. Little by little, our constitution is being chipped away. Those of you who fail to respond when someone else's freedom is taken away, will probably scream the loudest when "they" come for one of your own.

Guest Post

Israel, Campus Unreality and Democratic Reality

Guest Post by Joey Tartakovsky

My mother, past president of the Berkeley-Oakland Feminist Socialist Organization, is no stranger to the zany world of campus politics. Protesting Vietnam in the late 1960s, she encountered radicals of all stripes. But Israel, she recalls, was never one of their causes. Now, all campus radicals, no matter their inspiration—socialists, animal rights activists, ethnic racists, radical greens, alien cults—seem to have a problem with Israel.

Compare the “free Palestine” movement with the “free Tibet” movement to illustrate the sheer campus brutality against Israel. Professors do not offer lunchtime lectures ‘objectively’ explaining how terrible China is. There is no divestment from China campaign. There is no academic boycott of China. Casual anti-China brickbats aren't hurled out by professors in the Environmental Studies or Dramatic Arts departments. Even at Tibetan freedom concerts, rare would be the attendee that declared China a fundamentally illegitimate country and demanded its abolition.

The calls to abandon our only ally in the Middle East and the foul apologies for terrorism are testaments to the intellectual corruption of the academy. While chanting about peace and justice in the Middle East, the campus turns a blind eye to the world’s ghastliest conflicts, like the Congo war, whose butcher’s bill exceeds Israel-Palestinian fighting by a factor of one-thousand. Upper-middle-class revolutionaries stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, yet ignore the ethnic cleansing of 300,000 of them by Kuwait after they cheered Saddam Hussein. In four years at UC Santa Barbara, I never once heard someone explain why Palestinian Arabs have no rights in Lebanon, but why in Israel they sit on the Supreme Court, serve as Ambassadors and lead parties in the Israeli parliament.

What’s interesting is that the most outspoken are not students, but activist professors, who exploit their position of privilege to preach. It is unfortunate that they were hired in the first place, because they will ensure ideological conformity for years to come in their classrooms and departments. As consolation, I note that their unwillingness to take the American side in any dispute—in fact, their proud hostility towards American principles and interests—has ensured that no U.S. policymaker will ever take them seriously. This is how it should be.

America supports Israel because Israel resembles America. They share common strategic interests, common democratic principles and common jihadist enemies. Some identify the U.S.-Israel alliance as the product of a “Jewish lobby,” a view popular in Cairo and Riyadh and Paris. But do these types really find it strange that Americans are less than enamored of the Palestinians after Americans watched the West Bank erupt in celebration on 9/11? How do they think Americans should respond as they watch Palestinians deploy the same barbaric method of suicide bombing practiced on them by bin Laden? Does our government share intelligence with Iran, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority—or with Israel? Why? In the new war, medieval Islamic aggressors seek to humiliate and bloody the United States, and it is clear where the allegiances lie in the Middle East. It resembles the alignments in the Fascist-Democratic and Communist-Democratic wars. Between the U.S. and al-Qaeda there is no peace process, only a war process, which ends when one side is defeated and demoralized. So it is with Israel and Fatah and Hamas.

Yasir Arafat has left this world. He was the billionaire godfather of modern terrorism, pioneer of school hostage-takings, multiple plane hijackings and suicide bombings. He never stopped calling for jihad, he stole $900 million in public funds between 1995-2002, and he was a failure to his people. After decades of “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” he did so one last time by leaving the 2000 Camp David talks. Some claimed that Israel never really made an offer; others insisted it was a most generous deal. But the terms of the deal were never made public, and so it remained subject to debate. Until now. With the publication of his book Missing Peace, Ambassador Dennis Ross put in print the terms of the Camp David deal, which Clinton personally read to both sides. Guess what? It was exactly what Barak and Clinton said it was: 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, dismantlement of all settlements save three blocs contiguous to Israel, limited right of return and a $30 billion compensation package.

The Oslo era is over. Israel has resolved to act unilaterally, a wise and overdue decision. This is now Israel’s policy: exit the Gaza Strip, build a fence and kill the terrorists. Israel has every right to hunt those who murder its citizens as surely as we hunt bin Laden and al-Zarqawi. Terrorists have no right to trial or due process nor protection from the Geneva Conventions. Israel owes the Palestinians nothing except the right to live in their own independent state. However cruel it may sound, the truth is that Palestine will never really be free. Israeli occupation will eventually end, yes, but its replacement? The character of the future government of Palestine will resemble, depending on the outcome of the impending civil war, lawlessness or theocratic tyranny, or something in between, the only certainty being an oppression rooted in Arafat’s long and corrupt tenure. Palestinian society reflects the same blend of corruption, gender apartheid, religious intolerance and conspiratorialism that has left the region impoverished and shackled.

Americans have come to realize that the U.N. is not the esteemed forum of collective world wisdom they imagined it to be, but a corrupt place for the thugs of the world to unite in solidarity against the democratic few. More and more, Americans just don’t give a damn what happens at the UN. They see a crooked oil-for-food-scandal involving Kofi Annan’s own son. They see a UN obsessed with persecuting a tiny democracy beset on all sides by fascistic governments while millions perish without fanfare in Serbia, Rwanda and Iraq. The tyrant-infested UN will not change, and Israel will continue to be bullied. Why? Because there are fifty-seven Islamic-majority states, amounting to one-third of the UN’s total membership. Israel will always be outvoted. Thus, the UN will rule that Israel’s fence is illegal—a measure of self-defense forced after one-hundred and thirty suicide bombings in four years—and simultaneously deny the very existence an ongoing genocide in the Sudan whose toll approaches 70,000. (The perpetrators are Muslim Arabs, and so criticism of the Khartoum regime is squelched.) And this will all be business as usual.

Europe will criticize Israel too. To understand why, consider the large and growing domestic Muslim populations (as high as 10% of the population of France), fears of Arab terrorism, residual anti-Semitism, and kowtowing to Gulf oil producers. But I wonder if this can hold forever. After all, Israel is not really their problem. In the near future, the true threats to Europe will become clearer: tens of thousands of unassimilated, resentful immigrants from North Africa and the Greater Middle East, many drawn to the call of jihad, and a nuclearized mullocracy in Iran. Each European nation will react differently. Some will choose to join the U.S. in confronting terrorism; others will appease it. Europe has learned that if you cross Israel, Israelis shrug and feel disappointed. If you cross the Islamic world, you risk ten coordinated Semtex bombings in a Madrid train station at rush hour. Spain threw out its government for an appeasing socialist, and now learns that the same holy warriors are attempting to blow up its high court and soccer stadiums.

If it puffs Syrian or Egyptian pride vis-à-vis Israel to do at the UN what they could not do on the battlefield—win—then let them posture. It does not change the fact that Israelis are rich and powerful and free, and Syrians and Egyptians are poor and illiterate and weak. Does anyone doubt that grudge and envy do not fire their anger against Israel, a country of six million? Israel’s neighbors have fallen so far behind the rest of the world in the globalizing era that their literacy rates lag behind those of sub-Saharan Africa. Spain translates more books in a year than the entire Arab Middle East has in the last thousand years.

Meanwhile, Israel has transformed a resource-poor land the size of New Jersey into a proud and unapologetic democracy that wins wars. Self-investment, openness and unbound inquiry have catapulted Israel to world leader in medical, military and internet technology, developers of everything from the agricultural equipment used in the valleys of California and AOL Instant Messenger to our ballistic missile defense system. A commitment to economic liberty and the rule of law have grown Israel’s economy larger than those of South Africa and Argentina, whose populations number 42 million and 39 million, respectively. Critics whine that Israelis possess tanks while Palestinians wield only rocks. It does not seem to register with them that Israel has tanks because Israel invented tanks. (It’s called the Merkava, from the Biblical word for “chariot.”) Out of twelve Nobel prizes awarded this year, Israelis received two. These are the earned fruits of a free society.

The Holocaust destroyed forever the universe of European Jewry from which Einstein, Freud and Marx emerged—its culture, language, and two-thirds of its lives. But one of the most curious aspects of this narrative is that the survivors did not allow themselves to drown in a black ocean of loss and pity, or pledge eternal revenge against Germany. Instead, they set about to rebuild, painfully, but inspirited by a deep sense of faith and dignity. This moral character explains why Israel has never produced a suicide bomber, and why Palestine has never produced a deserving Nobel laureate. History is made not by unseen social forces but by men, and it matters dearly in the determination of a nation’s fate whether its Founding Fathers are men like David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann and Abba Eban and whether they are men like Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Yasir Arafat.

— Joey Tartakovsky is assistant editor of the Claremont Review of Books, published by The Claremont Institute. He graduated this year from UC Santa Barbara, where he was founding president of American Students for Israel. This essay reprinted from Victor Davis Hanson's Private Papers

Why the Dead Vote

Why the Dead Vote

I'm getting a bit of flack over my unsubstantiated statement yesterday that the result included "all the election fraud, all the dead and illegal voters voting against him." Since I can not rely on every reader to be a long term fan, I shall reprise my understanding of the American electoral process, as I have witnessed it over the last half century.

I have a background in actual politics, the kind that we had before the internet, before everyone became an expert. It is my experience that most American urban centers are controlled by democrat machines, and these machines commonly vote the dead, and multiple voting is more than the canard: "vote early, and often." It is the way of life, certainly in New York, and reportedly elsewhere. Also Stalin's maxim that the voters count for little, the vote counters count for far more has more than a bit of reality to it, and solidly democrat precincts have precious little in the way of opposition poll watchers. My mother was a democrat District Leader, which in New York City is a pretty powerful position, and I was therefore able, at a very young age, to watch the sausage of our political repast being made. I also have no reason to keep these secrets, since my mother is beyond the reach of any temporal punishment, and all I ever did was witness these crimes.

You might ask why a solidly democrat district needs to pad the tally for the top of the democrat ticket. The answer is simple. Each district has a slate of its own candidates for minor functionaries and, especially, judges. The judges apparently have a keen interest in the result, since they commonly, and I have with my own eyes witnessed this, pay immense amounts of cash to the district leaders in return for nomination in a "safe" district. The leaders, two in each district, therefore can take no chances on the outcome of these little elections. Sometimes independent candidates run, and, instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars to each district leader, mount actual campaigns. Sometimes, they even win. Thus, the dead return, to vote one more time. Bums, who we now call "the homeless," are sent in to play the part of dead or absent voters, and enter the voting booth with a slate of levers to pull, in return for which they are remunerated. In order to make the final tally balanced, they vote the entire ticket, not just the few specific candidates that have paid for this service. Thus, the top of the ticket is padded. The result of the presidential race is rarely, if ever, changed, since these are pretty solidly democrat precincts in the first place. But the final tally will show plenty of extra votes for the president.

During the years that I witnessed this activity on my democrat mother's side, my father was an activist on the republican side. I owe him a great debt for pointing these activities out to my brother and me. Since he was an immigrant from Europe, this type of corruption seemed reasonable to him. What impressed him far more, was that this type of shennanigans did not go on in the republican ranks. I can not say that they indeed did not, since an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but I can definitely say that, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson got credit for far more votes than they deserved. Nobody doubts that they got a few extra votes in Chicago as well, and there is quite a bit of evidence out there that JFK got some help in East Texas in 1960.

Doubters might say that these activities no longer go on, that district leaders in safe districts no longer accept cash in return for their support for mediocre lawyers seeking refuge on the bench, but there are also those who believe that chickens have lips. I have no doubt that fraud of all kinds, perpetrated by those on both sides, goes on to this day. But I saw what I saw, and in my experience, only democrats have done these things, and none of the republicans I know today would participate in anything like this type of vote fraud. Your mileage may differ. But what can not be said, is that these charges are unsubstantiated. I saw with my own eyes bags of cash, and bums being paid to vote the dead, going from precinct to precinct on election day. For the record, and I know that it weakens my story, my mother gave her cash to her co-leader, or at least that is what my parents told us kids. But it is certainly true that politics ain't beanbag, and I saw it with my own eyes.

A Clear Result

A Clear Result

One week after an election in which more Americans voted for the winner than any other time in history, the sore losers and fantasists of the Left are still rambling on, making up stories and excuses for their loss. While not all of them believe that the majority "voted for an extremist Christian regime," many do, and many more are hatching conspiracy plots of a stolen election. The denial is palpable, and Occam's Razor is nowhere to be seen. The simple conclusion, that more people voted for the candidate that they wanted in the White House, seems out of reach for these people.

Not much has changed since eight months ago, when John Kerry was selected by the Iowa caucuses as the candidate of the Democrats. Terry McAuliffe's master plan to allow the good people of New Hampshire and Iowa to decide the primary race by March netted the party another soulless northeastern liberal lawyer. At that time I predicted a 40 state victory for Bush with confidence, and while I missed the margin of vistory by a bit, I was not alone in my confidence in that victory. We believed that our moderate-to conservative electorate would never stand for such an extreme ideologue, such a wealthy elitist, and they didn't. The only reasons for the closeness of the election I have stated before. The massive propaganda onslaught by the media is misunderstood in many quarters as a depiction of Bush as an incompetent. The truth about it is that they unfairly, and quite successfully, painted him as an extreme conservative. They falsely claimed that the nation is bitterly divided, a prophesy that they managed to make real to a certain extent. They allowed lies by the Kerry campaign to stand without scrutiny, such as the claim that this was the worst economy since Herbert Hoover, that jobs have been lost on Bush's watch. They underestimated the American voter. Almost two thirds, or 71% of the voters who participated in the exit polls said that their personal economy was as good as or better than it was four years ago. A majority had indeed been convinced that the national economy was worse, yet not enough of them voted for the Democrat as a result, since only 45% trusted Kerry to handle the economy any better than Bush had.

For the third of the electorate that is worried, or even bitter, about the result, we on the right can relate. We went through the same thing twelve years ago. Therein lies the good news - nothing so bad happened when Clinton "caught the pickup truck" then, nothing so bad will ensue for the next four years. We can expect four more years of freedom for more and more people around the world. Four more years of jihadi terror masters on the run. Four more years of positive GDP growth spurred by low taxes. None of this is a formula for disaster. The only disaster that is on the horizon is the disaster that will surely befall the Democrat Party if they fail to heed the message of this election. If they continue in the Nancy Pelosi - Hillary Clinton - Howard Dean direction, they can expect less of the vote next time. They need to understand that they did get their message out, and most Americans rejected it. The last two national elections they won, their candidate ran to the right of their Republican adversary. It is simple for me, as a businessman, to see that you should reinforce positive statistics, and run away from negative ones. Simple. Say no to liberal lawyer. Yes to Southern Governor. Realize that Nancy Pelosi's district has 35% home ownership, and the rest of the country has 70%. Remember that Bill Clinton won on welfare reform and the castigation of Sister Soulja, and Kerry lost with all of Hollywood, and Michael Moore, on his side.

This election was not so much about George W. Bush as it was about his mandate, which couldn't be clearer - continue stomping the Jihadis wherever they are, keep taxes low, and reform Social Security. Appoint some conservative, meaning non-activist, judges, including (hopefully) replacing a few superannuated Justices of the Supreme Court. The most breathtaking thing about the election result is that its mandate demands that Bush actually become a conservative President. We on the Right can only wait, and hope, that he gets the message. He needs to curb his liberal tendencies, especially in the area of entitlements. Creating new bureaucracies, and pushing legislation authored by Ted Kennedy, both things he did in his first term, he should eschew in his second. In the face of all the propaganda, all the election fraud, all the dead and illegal voters voting against him, we still elected him. He needs to heed his mandate, and act accordingly. The early noises he has made are encouraging. With a result this clear, he needs to turn noise into action.

Margin of Victory

Margin of Victory

This is a conservative country, and this election shows that. But make no mistake, the margin of victory was much greater than three and a half million votes. To believe that, you must believe that Bruce Springstein and P Diddy delivered nothing to the final Kerry totals, that millions of votes cast by the dead, illegal aliens, and purely fraudulent votes cast by nonexistent people were evenly divided between the two candidates, and that ownership of the national propaganda machine meant nothing to the final result. Balderdash! No, the rational conclusion must be that this nation is so conservative, so convinced that John Kerry would have been a disaster for us, that even in the face of this unprecedented assault upon the democratic process in America, George W. Bush carried the day with much more than the margin of victory that the official vote tallies show.

There is no way to count the number of voters who were misled into voting for the stealth candidate. It is not in our national interest to attempt to count the vast number of fraudulent votes that were successfully cast by leftist operatives. There is no way to understand the effect of a national media juggernaut that unfairly cast Bush in the most unfavorable light at every opportunity had on the final tally. But anyone who considers this question fairly must come to the conclusion that these instrumentalities had some effect.

To understand this, we must remember that many on the left considered the first Bush victory a theft, and have spent the last four years simmering with the need, and believing that they had the right, to use any means to justify their end, which they believe to be a restoration of liberal leadership in the White House. That is why we have seen massive theft of Bush campaign lawn signs from coast to coast. That is why we have seen CBS news caught twice attempting to fabricate damning news against the President. That explains the popularity of Fahrenheit 911. (Either every American has seen that film, or many left leaning viewers have seen it many times each.) But popular vote totals show the wrongness of that view. Bush exceeded his vote totals, both in number and expressed as a fraction, of his 2000 results, according to the exit polls, in every area and in almost every demographic cohort. This is truly a triumph of the people, by the people, and for the people. I may not be Adam Yoshida, but the Left must pardon me as I gloat. Or not, but gloat I will. I am thrilled to be the winner, this time. We can take up our criticism of the many failings of George W. Bush later, and admonish both parties for giving us two such flawed candidates. But the democrats ran such a loser, such an unmitigated disaster, that we can all be proud and relieved that Bush won. In spite of all the shennanigans, the tricks and the fraud, and the unprecedented level of propaganda, the American people dodged a bullet on Tuesday.