18 posts tagged “national review”

Lopez: What is a conservative?

Noonan: Thank you for asking. I think this is something we should talk about more, and something I would urge NR to address with a greater force or breadth. Bill Buckley and his hardy band — James Burnham, Jeffrey Hart, etc. — brought to their task a certain missionary zeal. They thought they had to explain this thing, conservatism, to an American public that had just come through 25 years of the New Deal and had not heard or seen conservatism announced, put forward, or explained in a coherent way in more than a generation. (Russell Kirk of course was very much a part of this project, in perhaps a broader way.) Let me tell you, everyone wants to talk about politics, and the kind of ad McCain should cut, but what about the philosophies that animate our politics? But briefly, my views. You can debate whether conservatism is a philosophy, a program of settled ideas, a school of thought, a way of seeing the world. I tend to see it, to experience it, as a way of being, a way of understanding the world and responding to it. I cannot help but think that knowing there is a God is the start of all conservatism. (Apologies to agnostic friends who are various kinds and flavors of conservative.) Once you know that you know something big. From there you go on to knowing man. “If men were angels . . . ” They are not, so you don’t want to give them too much governmental power. I’ll throw forward some words and phrases meant to be shorthand for a lot. Prudence. A sense of reality. Understanding limits. Respect for tradition — it didn’t happen by accident. The long view. Respect for the individual and his rights. A knowledge that life is worth living, we’re lucky to be here. I would add or emphasize, for me, a Catholic sense of mystery — we don’t know all, can’t know all, must do our best. I think of ideology as some abstract thing dreamed up by intellectuals and squished down on the heads of human beings — “You will conform your actions to my ideological assumptions and expectations!” I see philosophy as something that rises up from human beings who observe and live with human beings. Conservatism is not an ideology. That’s the last thing it is.

This is taken from an enlightening interview with Noonan.  Going forward from this current political situation, she shares her view that Conservatives need to begin focusing on what makes America...and she is clear that Washington isn't it.  It's worth reading the whole thing. 

I attended the rally this morning and was happy to see it packed to the rafters.  In fact, today is double awesome because I sent an e-mail to NRO and -- it must be a slow day -- the editor posted it on the site.

Just returned from the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia Beach.  It was packed full of folks who wanted to scream their heads off for Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin.  And by packed full, I mean that I sat in traffic for an hour and then stood in line for 45 minutes.  Folks behind McCain were there at 3 am, I was told.
Palin made a few remarks about anger being turned to action, listing the things folks are angry with.  Standard stuff, until the last one: Voter fraud!  The crowd ate it up.  Also, she pronounced Norfolk as Nor-fork which a lot of folks from other parts of the country tend to do.
McCain was on his message, though not everyone in the crowd was wild about his plan to buy up bad mortgages.
I came out of the rally feeling like it will be a close race here in VA, despite what's on the news.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Journalists continue to ask, “What was John McCain thinking in selecting the gaffe-prone Gov. Sarah Palin?”
In what has now become a disturbing pattern, the Alaska governor seems either unable or unwilling to avoid embarrassing statements that are often as untrue as they are outrageous. Recently, for example, in an exclusive interview with news anchor Katie Couric, Palin gushed, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’ ” Apparently the former Alaskan beauty queen failed to realize that in 1929 there was neither widespread television nor was Franklin Roosevelt even President.

Get the point?

And it is a problem in this country.

The Left Finally Accepts Religion in Government... So Long As You Worship Obama

Thinking about the Smith College op-ed where a student declares Obama to be her "Personal Jesus," I'm reminded of something I wrote on the off-duty blog:

This [children singing about Obama] video illustrates a phenomenon that I’ve periodically underestimated in assessing politics this cycle.

A large number of Americans, like the poster on Mulder’s wall, Want To Believe.

They want to believe in a political leader who they can describe in Messianic terms. They want to touch hands that have touched him. They want the face of their leader staring down on them on posters in public places.

They want to indoctrinate their children about his greatness before they can think for themselves, as we saw in the “children singing” video.

They want to sing songs about him, and credit him for “healing people’s souls.” They want to get together in groups of tens of thousands and chant their leader’s name. They want to make that silly “O” salute.

Cam, you and I have talked offline about the Founding Fathers and their vision of what a citizen of the new nation would be: fiercely independent, largely self-reliant, skeptical of government power, fearful of the passions of the public at large, and modest in his national ambitions. A large swath of the public is the exact opposite of this.

“A Republic, if you can keep it.” It’s tough to keep it if enough of the citizenry wants to see the chief executive as a Xersian God-King.

We can argue if Obama's tax plan is good or bad, or whether unconditional face-to-face summits with Iran's leaders is a good idea, or whether McCain or Obama have the managerial skills to be an effective president. But it's impossible to refute someone who believes that Obama is healing people's souls. You can't dissuade someone whose criteria for a president is whether or not he can make that "mythical voice boom out over the mountaintops." It's fascinating that the press that screamed bloody murder over John Ashcroft holding prayer meetings with some staffers before work is now shrugging its shoulders at the fact that a portion of the national conversation includes, "In the Name of Obama, Amen."

This issue is perhaps the most troubling aspect of a troubling presidential race.  At some point I think all conservatives have hit "the wall" in debate with liberals about Obama and his policies.  Rational point after rational point can be made against the man, and acknowledged by our opponents as a shortcoming...but it never actually makes a difference to anyone. 

For too many people, support for Obama is based on irrational hopes and vague promises of change.  What bothers me the most about the other side is how uncritical they are of this untried man who wants to be our nation's top bureaucrat.  But the office of POTUS has somehow been conflated with the idea of a visionary and epochal leader.  That's worse for the country than any recession.

Ask any conservative today about John McCain and I doubt you'd find the same kind of unblinking acceptance of the candidate.  I feel like we have our eyes wide open about McCain's shortcomings, and have decided that despite those he remains the better candidate in this race.  Rest assured that if McCain breaks with conservatism too often he will be roundly and forcefully criticized.  I believe in my heart that if Obama breaks with liberalism then it will be liberals who modify their stance on the issues. 

Props to Geraghty for referencing Xerxes and all the attendant imagery that name evokes. 

Actually, I've contracted out the services of one Charles Krauthammer for this blog, since I am confident that he is miles beyond me in terms of firsthand knowledge of the subject matter in the Gibson-Palin interview.  Taken from National Review Online.

I will, upon viewing the rest of the interview, offer my own thoughts.  But this is something to chew on and will save me time later.  Also, I am gratified to note that my perception of Gibson's partisanship, which I wrote about in my last post, was shared by others in the conservative community. 

It Was Gibson’s Gaffe
Which made the smug condescension all the more precious.

By Charles Krauthammer

“Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she
agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what
he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed
her that it meant the right of ‘anticipatory self-defense.’ ”

— New York Times, September 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration — and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today.

He asked Palin, “Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?”

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, “In what respect, Charlie?”

Sensing his “gotcha” moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, he grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine “is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense.”

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of The Weekly Standard titled, “The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism,” I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to Congress nine days later, Bush declared: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” This “with us or against us” policy regarding terror — first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan — became the essence of the Bush doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq War was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of pre-emptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It’s not. It’s the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of Bush foreign policy and the one that most distinctively defines it: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush’s second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”



This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy’s pledge that the United States “shall pay any price, bear any burden . . . to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson’s 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign-policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume — unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise — that he was speaking about Bush’s grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda.

Not the Gibson doctrine of pre-emption.

Not the “with us or against us” no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed “doctrines” in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines, which came out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few conflicting foreign-policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Palin didn’t know what it is. But neither does Gibson. And at least she didn’t pretend to know — while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, “sounding like an impatient teacher,” as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes’ reaction to the phenom who presumes to play on their stage.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Sarah Palin was accused of many things over the week.  One of the less obscene was the notion that she, a prolifer openly opposed to abortion, had hypocritically cut funding for pregnant teens. 

As it turns out, that was true!  Sort of.  As always, a partial truth is more damaging than a total lie.  For you see:

In the Washington Post, a respected reporter noted disapprovingly that Palin had “slashed” funds for a program benefiting pregnant teens. He failed to mention the relevant fact that she was using her line-item veto power to quadruple funds for the program instead of quintupling them.

Above quote lifted without permission or reservation from David Freddoso on NRO.  Emphasis mine.

I doubt the blogger who brought that accusation to my attention (a polite way of saying "vomited it gleefully into the ether") will find this post, but my fellow conservatives:

Arm yourselves with it. 

As our ideological opponents recover from their shock, they will come up with more substantive arguments against our next Vice President.  It is an accepted rhetorical tactic to exploit the ignorance of your opponent, and if these baseless accusations can still find any traction it will be a wearying two months. 

Don't underestimate your opponent's duplicity.  Palin riles the Obama supporter, because she gives needed energy and vitality to McCain.  Some of them will mix fact and falsehood with desperate purpose, to protect their investment in Barack Obama.

Educate yourselves.

In a recent article on National Review Online, Das Krauthammer strikes Obama full in the face with the flail of righteous consternation:

Obama cited Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as presidents who met with enemies. Does he know no history? Neither Roosevelt nor Truman ever met with any of the leaders of the Axis powers. Obama must be referring to the pictures he’s seen of Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta, and Truman and Stalin at Potsdam. Does he not know that at that time Stalin was a wartime ally?

During the subsequent Cold War, Truman never met with Stalin. Nor Mao. Nor Kim Il Sung. Truman was no fool.

Obama cites John Kennedy meeting Nikita Khrushchev as another example of what he wants to emulate. Really? That Vienna summit of a young, inexperienced, untested American president was disastrous, emboldening Khrushchev to push Kennedy on Berlin — and then near fatally in Cuba, leading almost directly to the Cuban missile crisis. Is that the precedent Obama aspires to follow?

At issue, in my mind, is Obama's continuing illegitimate preservation from any serious form of criticism.  Had Obama been John McCain, and made a similar statement of such raw, unfiltered ignorance, he would have been smothered to death in his own pasty white wrinkles by a vengeful Media full of borderline-retarded Obama cultists. 

And yet, we continue to see the magical, mystical armor of uncritical acceptance surround Obama.  It preserves him from anything that would call into question his ability to lead successfully.  It stifles the process of evaluating the man who will lead us for four years...four potentially big years. 

I've said it before, but Obama versus Putin (or even Putin's protege) is not a contest.  Yet nobody is seriously evaluating how savvy this man might be!  Instead, we studiously ignore his ties to racist Black Liberation theology, cracked-out 60s radicalism, and effete liberal disaffection!  At the very least, these qualities should give us pause, time to think that perhaps Obama is a poor judge of character.  "Poorer than George Bush?," you may be starting to smirk.  Yes, infinitely. 

So we'll see Hillary defeated in the first two weeks of June, Obama will continue to make his ridiculous statements, and anyone who dares to raise an objection to his sophomoric policy ideas will be branded a racist and declared beneath contempt by a media whose investment in the outcome of this race is, to put it as nicely as I can, unprofessional.

What a world - in which we strive to protect the illusion of competence surrounding a candidate obviously ill-suited for the position, to in turn suit egotistical notions about our own enlightenment.

Are you now or have you ever been a member of the neoconservative movement?  It often feels like folks who support the Iraq War in particular and the War on Terror in general are unreservedly labeled neoconservative, neocon, neopig, baby-killer, etc.  In truth, support for the war has never been the exclusive domain of neoconservatism, which philosophy is a convenient political ally for conservatives like myself. 
There are some differences between neoconservatism and what I would consider an archetypal American Conservative.  Neocons are not, in my experience, all that committed to social conservatism.  This isn't bad, per se, at best it means they are simply focused on other issues.  Their actual beginnings are quite interesting for someone who has only learned of the neocons through the media.  Burned by liberalism many ages ago, these intellectuals brought their considerable smarts to bear in the fight to spread American notions of liberty and representative government while preserving American interests.  At least I thought so.  The real truth is slightly different.
I read a piece by Jonah Goldberg on the topic.  Here's a snippet:

Obviously, supporting the spread of democracy hardly requires you to support the Iraq war. But it works the other way around as well. Support for the Iraq war doesn’t automatically make you a neoconservative. Douglas J. Feith, a former undersecretary of defense after 9/11, argues in his new memoir, War and Decision, that democratization didn’t rank very high among the Bush administration’s early priorities. Moreover, the administration’s mistakes in Iraq — perhaps including the war itself — have less relationship to ideology than many think. “It is possible,” as Kagan notes, “to be prudent or imprudent, capable or clumsy, wise or foolish, hurried or cautious in pursuit of any doctrine.” (Just ask newly hired Hamas spokesman Jimmy Carter.)

The question I ask myself is whether the current political climate allows the liberals to step back and really examine their views.  For the liberal leaders, this is obviously not in their interest.  But for the people who mindlessly condemn neoconservatism without being able to explain its basic origins and principles...there's hope they will see sense before they are duped into electing a person who will put us on the path taken by Europe.

National Review Online has a tremendous piece by Frederick W. Kagan on Iraq.  Specifically, the common myths associated with the war that many on the left side of the spectrum continually cite as reasons we have lost, will lose, or must withdraw from the present conflict.
Do the nattering nabobs really know the counterpoint to their arguments?  I would think not.  So often I see a parroted claim about the war that can be no more supported than the rantings of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  Conservatives who have conviction but not the knowledge to back it up must educate themselves so as to better exploit this weakness.  Liberals who wish to better defend themselves may also find the article useful.

Let's just ignore for now the sobering fact that no amount of information will make any of us actually change our minds, and just enjoy the opportunity to learn.

The article's long, as something like this would have to be, but it's not overlong.  Five years of the left pulling out every conceivable objection to the war have left Kagan a big job.  He tackles it handily and you should read the whole thing.  However, I provide a snippet to draw you in:

The War Costs Too Much
An increasingly popular talking point of the antiwar party is that the war simply costs too much and that we must end it and refocus on domestic priorities. This talking point has a number of variants:

The “$3 trillion war.” Simplistic economic analysis declares that the war has cost the taxpayers $3 trillion since its inception, implying that this is a $3 trillion dead loss to the economy — a price too high to pay.

• Modern economics has long understood that the notion of a one-for-one guns-versus-butter trade-off is simply wrong. A high proportion of money spent on defense goes back into the U.S. economy in the form of salaries paid to the more than 5 million Americans employed directly or indirectly by the Defense Department, and payments to the defense industry and the long and complex supply chains from which they draw their raw materials. Military spending has traditionally been a form of economic stimulus, and wars more commonly end recessions or depressions than start them. That’s not a good reason to start a war, but neither is it a good reason to lose one. The impact of the current war on the U.S. economy, finally, is far smaller than the impact of previous major conflicts. Military spending in World War II ranged from 17.8 percent of GDP to 37.5 percent; in Korea from 5.0 percent (in 1950 — 7.4 percent in 1951) to 14.2 percent; in Vietnam from 7.4 percent to 9.4 percent. Current expenditures on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars bring total defense expenditures to something well below 5 percent of GDP. Even granting the simplistic and misleading $3 trillion figure, $3 trillion is about 5 percent of the nearly $60 trillion American GDP over the five years of the war.

I found this interesting article on National Review, and thought I'd share it.  I enjoy the fact that Islam is still being preserved from criticism, even much deserved criticism.  It seems that no progress has been made since the riots following the pope's call to reason at Regensburg. 
Threaten enough people and I guess you get your way.  Perhaps when Christians begin to cut off the heads of their detractors they will be afforded the same deference.  I doubt that very much, for it often seems that anti-Christian sentiment is the last acceptable bigotry.  Is it because we are "the Establishment" religion?  Perhaps so.  Europeans are increasingly godless and it has ever been the fashion of the American societal elite to ape Europe.   Give him enough time, and the common man begins to ape the ape in a bid for the appearance of sophistication. 
The other week I had the occasion to attempt a dialogue with another Voxer who had made it very clear that she didn't like my particular religion.  She trotted out the usual litany of abuses committed by my Church over the years, but focused primarily on the sexual abuse scandal among the clergy.  When I offered a counterpoint to her views, I was unfortunately met with "The Wall."  That is, the "this is my personal view and I don't want to be criticized for it" wall.  Now, I would hope that anyone who reads my piddling excuse for a blog would understand my frustration.  Anything I post in public I understand to be open to criticism.  Especially if I post something critical to another person's beliefs.  Sometimes, I border on the insulting.  I'd hate to be labeled a troll, but there is a point at which letting an accusation or a misconception stand is tantamount to agreement.  So it seems I am constantly stepping on the toes of liberals, atheists, global warming nuts and even Protestants.
It's all quite frustrating, because at the end of the day the Internet just isn't real.  The victories I might win are easily ignored.  The points I make are suspect because the conversation begins with me as an intruder on a particular person's public space (which makes no sense to me...the Internet is hardly private).  So what is the point of it all?
Well, I still believe that we can carry our principles with us even when we are completely anonymous.  I feel that the anonymity allows us to engage in debate devoid of the usual obfuscations of personal pride and ego.  Rhetorical tactics can still be used to great effect, but the debate can be essentially neutral without lacking substance.
What we say on the Internet actually is real and it matters.  I still believe that relativism is the thing that will doom us to half-witted expressions of banal tolerance for even the worst sorts of offenses.   And so I suppose I am going to continue feeling awkward and unpopular amongst my many anonymous Internet acquaintances.
Whose commentary, as always, I welcome.

The Evolution of Religious Bigotry

Courage without consequence.

By Jonah Goldberg

I just watched Fitna, a 17-minute film by Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. 

Released on the Internet last week, Fitna juxtaposes verses from the Koran with images from the world of jihad. Heads cut off, bodies blown apart, gays executed, toddlers taught to denounce Jews as “apes and pigs,” protesters holding up signs reading “God Bless Hitler” and “Freedom go to Hell” — these are among the powerful images from Fitna, Arabic for “strife” or “ordeal.”

Predictably, various Muslim governments have condemned the film. Half the Jordanian parliament voted to sever ties with the Netherlands. Egypt’s grand imam threatened “severe” consequences if the Dutch didn’t ban the film.

Meanwhile, European and U.N. leaders are going through the usual theatrical hand-wringing, heaping anger on Wilders for sowing “hatred.”

Me? I keep thinking about Jesus fish.

During a 1991 visit to Istanbul, a buddy and I found ourselves in a small restaurant, drinking, dancing, and singing with a bunch of middle-class Turkish businessmen, mostly shop owners. It was a hilariously joyful evening, even though they spoke little English and we spoke considerably less Turkish.

At the end of the night, after imbibing unquantifiable quantities of raki, an ouzo-like Turkish liqueur, one of the men gave me a worn-out business card. On the back, he’d scribbled an image. It was little more than a curlicue, but he seemed intent on showing it to me (and nobody else). It was, I realized, a Jesus fish.

It was an eye-opening moment for me, though obviously trivial compared with the experiences of others. Here in this cosmopolitan and self-styled European city, this fellow felt the need to surreptitiously clue me in that he was a Christian just like me (or so he thought).

Traditionally, the fish pictogram conjures the miracle of the loaves and fishes as well as the Greek word IXΘΥΣ, which means fish and also is an acronym for “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” Christians persecuted by the Romans used to draw the Jesus fish in the dirt as a way to tip off fellow Christians that they weren’t alone.

In America, these fish appear mostly on cars. Recently, however, it seems Jesus fish have become outnumbered by Darwin fish. No doubt you’ve seen these, too. The fish is “updated” with little feet on the bottom, and “IXΘΥΣ” or “Jesus” is replaced with either “Darwin” or “Evolve.”

I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there’s the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing that “hate is not a family value.” But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. “Namely: It’s acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it. A plaque with ‘Shalom’ written inside a Star of David would hardly attract notice; a plaque with ‘Usury’ written inside the same symbol would be an outrage.”

But it’s the false bravado of the Darwin fish that grates the most. Like so much other Christian-baiting in American popular culture, sporting your Darwin fish is a way to speak truth to power on the cheap, to show courage without consequence.

Whatever the faults of Fitna, it ain’t no Darwin fish.

Wilders’ film could easily get him killed. It picks up the work of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a jihadi for criticizing Islam.

Fitna is provocative, but it has good reason to provoke. A cancer of violence, bigotry, and cruelty is metastasizing within the Islamic world.

It’s fine for Muslim moderates to say they aren’t part of the cancer; and that some have, in response to the film, is a positive sign. But more often, diagnosing or even observing this cancer — in film, book or cartoon — is dubbed “intolerant,” while calls for violence, censorship, and even murder are treated as understandable, if regrettable, expressions of anger.

It’s not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, it’s that they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor violent.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.