That was the Planned Parenthood company line last week, on CNN:
And just yesterday, People for the American Way was describing the Live Action work as “discredited” “Hoax Videos.”
And while at least one clinic worker has been fired, a twentysomething is under attack — by a profit-making billion-dollar organization that receives taxpayer funding — for creating the videos. And while Planned Parenthood insists everything has been done by the book — well save in New Jersey, they do admit – questions have been raised by more than Live Action.
But today we learn that Planned Parenthood will be providing training so that Planned Parenthood workers don’t actually aid and abet sex trafficking.
I wish Planned Parenthood well in doing that. But given the mixed messages, and the history and reality of the organization — a reality that’s becoming ever more clear on these videos — there is reason to be skeptical. Live Action president Lila Rose calls it “window dressing.”
As the world’s media remain fixated on Egypt and what will become of President Hosni Mubarak and a post-Mubarak era, the Tunisian revolution is still a work in progress.
The sudden rise of political protests just three weeks ago in Tunisia, a country where protests had rarely been seen, resulted in days of demonstrations and the sudden and totally unexpected departure on January 14 of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, who had ruled Tunisia with an autocratic hand since November 1987. During the initial post–Ben Ali days, it seemed that Tunisia was out of control, or at least that is how it was portrayed by the international media who parachuted into Tunisia, with most journalists focusing on the demonstrations in the heart of Tunis.
While many segments of society wanted to immediately address economic grievances, people from teachers and policeman to health-care workers and administrators found the courage to put aside their personal needs at the request of the transitional government and return to work, with the promise that in short time these various grievances will be addressed.
To be sure, not all is perfect in Tunisia, nor is the transition an easy one for Tunisians. There have been scattered resistance groups, many thought to be remaining Ben Ali loyalists simply creating havoc for their own agenda. But the facts that were overlooked by those in the international media, nearly all of whom have left Tunisia, was that beyond the main avenues of central Tunis, one could see Tunisians helping to shape their own destiny.
Tunisians seem to have an attitude of wanting to help their country and one another, a phenomenon not unlike the post-9/11 environment in the United States. Civil society has been rallying around its “Tunisianess.”
Hopefully, other autocratic leaders will listen to their populaces and recognize that the era of repression eventually comes to an end. One can transition from it and try to exit gracefully and strategically, or remain blind to it and create further havoc. The “Tunisian playbook” does not have all the answers, but cautious optimism remains.
— Jerry Sorkin splits his time between Tunis and Philadelphia and, in July 2010, was elected president of the American Tunisian Association. These views are his own.
Planned Parenthood’s reflex in responding to Live Action’s video releases over the past week has been to dismiss and attack. Though, after a firing and two attorneys general interested in investigations, they say they will be retraining staff. Today, the talking point seems to be that videos were doctored. Media Matters says so (it has been key in coordinating the defense). And a Planned Parenthood spokesman ran with it, while admitting he hasn’t actually watched them himself.
The L.A. Times reports that the Obama administration has “reconciled itself” to a gradual pace of reform in Egypt in the interest of maintaining regional stability. That strategy differs somewhat from the tone of President Obama and especially his soon-to-be-ex press secretary Robert Gibbs in previous weeks, when the administration seemed to be pushing for a swift transition. Since then, according to the Times, the administration . . .
. . . has dampened the sense of urgency and aligned itself with power-brokers such as new Vice President Omar Suleiman, who are urging a more stable, if much slower, move to real democracy. But U.S. officials privately acknowledged that there is no guarantee that Suleiman, a former intelligence chief closely aligned with the military, is committed to substantial reforms.
They have said that countries in the Middle East must be allowed to progress politically at their own speed. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. supports democratic reforms across the region but acknowledges that “some countries will move at different paces.” In that vein, the administration now appears satisfied to have Mubarak remain as a figurehead as long as talks with the opposition continue. His resignation would trigger a constitutional requirement for elections in 60 days, and State Department officials warned that opposition parties may not be ready that quickly.
The Working Group on Egypt, a bipartisan group of scholars and former public officials, warned in a letter that the administration is being had:
. . . expressing fears that the White House might “acquiesce to an inadequate and possibly fraudulent transition process in Egypt.” “The process that is unfolding now has many of the attributes of a smoke screen. . . . Without significant changes, it will lead to preservation of the current regime in all but name and ensure radicalization and instability in the future.”
Former Florida state Republican chairman Al Cardenas has been buzzed about as possibly the next chairman of the American Conservative Union. Current chairman David Keene is expected to step down at tomorrow’s board meeting. He is also expected to be the next president of the National Rifle Association.
The Cuban-born Cardenas, currently an ACU board member and treasurer, tells NRO in a statement “in the event our chairman David Keene decides to step down due to other responsibilities, I will accept a board member’s nomination for chairman.”
Keene is also chairman of the ACU Foundation, which runs the Conservative Political Action Conference. He is expected to step down from both tomorrow.
Conservatives close to the situation are cautiously optimistic (I wrote about it here last week) that ACU et al. can get beyond current controversies about what the heck the ACU and CPAC stand for, post-Keene.
Sen. Dick Lugar (R., Ind.) told Indiana station WANE-TV that he fully intends to run again for the Senate in 2012 and that he plans to strike back at the tea partiers calling for a different GOP candidate.
Talking about how some tea partiers had criticized his support of President Obama’s START treaty, Lugar said, “I’ve got to say ‘Get real.’ I hear tea party or other people talking about they were against START. I said ‘Well, now, hang on here.’ If you want to get into START, let’s talk about it, but realistically as Americans, not as some Republican renegade. [I’m] trying to take warheads of Russia [out of circulation] so they won’t hit Indiana.”
He also defended his votes to confirm Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. “Otherwise we polarize the Supreme Court business to a point that conservative justices offered by a conservative Republican president — who’ll be elected at some point — are going to have trouble,” Lugar argued.
Kathryn: apropos of your correspondent — balderdash. It’s impossible to compare an act of war against the United States by a declared enemy with the conscience of a Catholic, who understands the difference between rendering unto Caesar and rendering unto a loving God.
When I was growing up in the fifties, my brother and sisters and I were taught, in order:
We were Americans.
We were Catholics.
We were Marine Corps kids (and had to act accordingly among civilians).
We were Irish.
St. Thomas More rightly dissented from Henry VIII’s theological demands, and paid the price of his dissent with his life. What he did not do was produce a weapon and kill Henry, Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich et al., while shouting the praises of the Pope in Rome or even of God Himself.
I watched most of HBO’s documentary on Reagan yesterday, and came away wondering why everyone cares so much about him. The chief aim of the piece, by its own characterization, was to demystify the former president. After watching it, I take that as documentarian-eze for “take down a notch or two.”
The good: The film features our own Peter Robinson (though not nearly enough, by my measure — a few sound bites from a long and substantive interview). And the story of Reagan’s pre-presidential years is charming and engaging.
But once focused on his years in office, the film offers little of substance to explain why Reagan is so revered. Instead, deficit spending, the AIDS epidemic, and Iran Contra got much of the attention The Hinckley assassination attempt is offered as an explanation for Reagan’s legislative success in lowering taxes. No doubt it played a role, but was it really that simple? Arthur Laffer is permitted to defend “Reaganomics,” but the film presents it as nothing more than “trickle-down” economics (or “Something-d-o-o economics,” as Ben Stein put it in another context). The film says little of the turnaround of the American economy from Carter’s “malaise” years, reined-in inflation and lowered interest rates, or any of the other significant domestic accomplishments of Reagan’s tenure.
Peter is interviewed briefly about the famous “tear down this wall” speech, but I doubt much of what he said of the impact and importance of that speech was included in the film. (Peter shares a brief amusing anecdote about how he had originally proposed a different formulation of that famous line, only to be told that it is best not to have the President proclaiming in a foreign tongue). The film declines to credit Reagan with the later fall of the Berlin Wall, describing the truth as more “complicated.”
So rather than demystifying President Reagan, the film comes off as a trite, myopic presentation of his presidency. If viewed by someone who knew nothing independently of Reagan, it would raise the question of why anyone would care. Various mainstream reviews I have read suggest that only the most ardent Reaganites would fail to see the film’s balanced presentation. I guess that makes me an ardent Reaganite.
I would be curious to know whether others watched and whether I’m simply being too hypersensitive about it all.
Pete Suderman points to a footnote to Medicare/Medicaid chief actuary Richard Foster’s congressional testimony on the true costs of Obamacare, the upshot of which is this: One reading of the Affordable Care Act could result in the addition of 5 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls than previously estimated. That would cost an additional $113 billion over prior estimates in the first decade alone — all but wiping out the bill’s alleged deficit reduction.
Over at The New Republic, Jesse Singal points out that a table I posted at the Corner back in December is based on inaccurate data. This table, which I got from the website Zero Hedge, illustrates how government subsidies and tax credits could create a disincentive to work. While the general principle that work barely pays for some people is sound, Singal is right that the math overstates the case. For instance, a mistake in the data is that total federal tax using the standard deduction, personal exemption, and child credit is $1,960 in income tax plus $4,950 in payroll tax, or $6,550, not $13,034 like shown in the table.
Because it came from Zero Hedge, a source I generally find useful, I didn’t give it the scrutiny it might have deserved. Obviously, this is no excuse for the lack of due diligence in reposting the table. Lesson learned.
However, there is positive aspect to this incident. It shows two things about how the Internet has affected discourse, both for the better: It has allowed more voices and information to circulate and allowed corrections to be made more easily and powerfully. On a personal level, it calls to mind something Ronald Reagan, whose centennial is being celebrated this week, was famous for saying in a different context: Trust, but verify.
Wael Ghonim, who works as Google’s head of marketing in the Middle East, was an early force in the would-be Egyptian revolution, creating a Facebook page calling for the ouster of President Mubarak. But on January 28, just three days after protests began in earnest in Tahrir Square, Ghomin was seized off the streets by government agents in plainclothes. Neither Ghonim’s family members nor Google knew what happened next, and many feared for his life. In fact, Ghonim was held by the state for 12 days — often blindfolded and kept completely insulated from events on the streets — before being released.
In a TV interview yesterday, Ghonim began to weep on being informed that at least 300 people had died on the streets during his captivity.
“We didn’t do anything wrong. We did what our consciences dictated to us,” he said in the interview, overcome with remorse for his role in mobilizing people through the Internet.
But Ghonim’s tears are being credited with galvanizing a revolutionary spirit that appeared to have cooled over the last several days:
“Ghonim’s tears have moved millions and turned around the views of those who supported (Mubarak) staying,” website Masrawy.com wrote two hours after Ghonim’s TV appearance. In that short span, 70,000 people had signed up to Facebook pages supporting him.
[. . .]
“Wael Ghonim is the Bouazizi of the Egyptians,” wrote journalist Mohamed al-Jarhi, referring to the Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi who helped launch Tunisia’s own uprising last month by setting himself on fire in protest at poverty and corruption.
Later, Ghonim gave a stirring speech to a massive crowd of protesters:
“I don’t feel guilty for the martyrs who died. I don’t feel guilty for the officers who died. Those who should feel guilty are those who are looting this country.
“I apologize to every father and mother and every person who lost his life for his country. For 12 days, I’ve been isolated. I saw the people who died. These are the heroes, and you are the heroes.”
The crowd started chanting, “One hand, one hand,” with Mr. Ghonim leading the crowd.
“I’m not a hero,” he said. “I was just typing on my keyboard. You are the heroes.
“I haven’t slept for three days. I’m tired.”
Chants began again: “Long live Egypt. Long live Egypt.”
“For a long time, I’ve been saying we have a voice that should be heard,” Mr. Ghonim said. “We have a right that should be taken seriously. We will take that right, even if we die as martyrs. Your demands are my demands. For the president to step down is our demand from now on.
“There are two messages I want to give. I don’t feel guilty for those who died. The second message: This is not a time to settle scores for personal gains, and it’s not a time for parties or ideologies. It’s time to say one thing: Egypt above all.
“I’ve observed that we are all brothers. Yesterday, I met with the minister of interior. He was addressing me as an equal. He said, I got your message. You are the youth of Facebook. You are the youth of Egypt.”
The latest milestone on this march away from reality came last month with the announcement that the American Anthropological Association has dropped the word “science” from its mission statements. The AAA has long been under the control of the postmodernist far left, so the announcement was no great surprise.
The proper study of mankind may still be man, but that study now belongs not to science but to the humanities, along with Chicana Studies, Queer Literary Theory, and Post-Colonial Discourse.
Here is some encouraging push-back in the human sciences, from the New York Times of all places.
Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”
It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.
“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal.
What’s to be done? Get ’em reading National Review!
To overcome taboos, he advised them to subscribe to National Review and to read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions.
By a friendly little coincidence, the current issue of National Review contains a feature article on Prof. Sowell.
Some said [Haidt] overstated how liberal the field is, but many agreed it should welcome more ideological diversity. A few even endorsed his call for a new affirmative-action goal: a membership that’s 10 percent conservative by 2020.
Ten percent by 2020? Hey, let’s not go overboard here, guys.
[And never mind Queer Literary Theory: If I'd been writing a few days later I could have cited Gay Math.]
[And-and, I should qualify having said “the New York Times of all places” with a word of tribute to their excellent Science section, which routinely publishes results from the human sciences that would cause apoplexy among the newspaper's op-ed writers, if they bothered to read them.]
Reacting to David Cameron’s Luton Munich speech, one prominent Canadian community leader said Cameron was “spot on” when he insisted British multiculturalism has failed, adding that Canada’s multi-culti experiment was no better off.
“The Canadian multicultural model has failed, as the British model has,” the leader said. “When first generation (Muslims) are more loyal to Canada than the second generation, then we have sufficient evidence to say that multiculturalism has failed.”
The leader went on to say that Canada’s Liberal and Conservative parties marginalize Muslims via “state-sponsored multiculturalism” that encourages the formation of insular ghettos, some of which preach illiberal, hate-filled anti-West rhetoric.
So who’s the leader? Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress.
In one week, a population-control bill in the Philippines is likely to be passed that supports coercive government-funded family-planning initiatives for demographically targeted populations. If passed, one year or even one generation from now, the root problems that this bill seeks to address will still exist. In fact, they’re likely to be exaggerated.
“The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011,” as this bill is officially titled, is in essence an attempt to curb the growing population of the Philippines through a variety of measures — most notably, a new sexual-education program, greater access and distribution of contraceptives, and eventually, government-funded abortion. This past week the bill made its way out of a plenary session and is now on the fast track to becoming law.
At present, the population of the Philippines is estimated to be over 92 million making it the world’s twelfth most populous country. Fertile women in the Philippines have, on average, 3.1 babies each — a stark contrast to neighboring Singapore, which had an all-time low average of 1.16 in 2010. Given its size and increasing growth, the needs of the Philippines are vast — education, health care, and better sanitation to name a few. But is population growth really the root cause of these problems and needs? History seems to indicate otherwise.
During the 20th century many Asian countries tried to implement population-control measures in an effort to eradicate poverty and better control limited resources. Countries such as China, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea — all thriving economic powerhouses — are now reporting sub–population replacement rates and are unsure of how they are going to be able to replace themselves.
In contrast, Hong Kong — one of the world’s densest populations — has become one of the hallmarks of Asian economic success. In the middle of the 20th century, the future for Hong Kong seemed dismal. Food and clean water were in short supply, jobless rates were high, and its growing population seemed unstoppable. However, rather than imposing population control measures on its citizens, the Hong Kong government realized that population equals potential. By providing the right conditions — access to education, health care, food and water, and a realization that the best investment to be made was in its people — Hong Kong created one of the most robust and thriving economies in the world today.
The mid-1950’s demographic situation of Hong Kong is comparable to the Philippines today. Section three of their proposed bill states that “the limited resources of the country cannot be suffered to be spread so thinly to service a burgeoning multitude that makes the allocations grossly inadequate and effectively meaningless.” Not only does this “guiding principle” fail to recognize that the greatest natural resource of the Philippines is human potential and ingenuity, it neglects the real needs of the country.
After World War II, the Philippines adopted a number of anti-market and protectionist economic policies that have resulted in these less than favorable conditions. As a result, roads were left unfinished and irrigation systems never built, and the poor conditions of seaports and airports crippled one of the nation’s best natural industries, agriculture. Most hurt by this environment were small-scale family farmers. In the provinces where they lived, schools were never built, hospitals and health-care facilities were poorly constructed and the means to access them were limited. Filipino lawmakers have tried to argue that population control will solve the nation’s poverty problems, but countless statistics and studies have proven that this just isn’t so. It is improved working conditions, quality schools, skilled birth attendants, and health-care facilities that will solve a number of the nation’s problems — maternal health, education, and employment among them.
The current bill in the Philippines aims to provide a roadmap for “responsible parenthood.” The solutions presented to achieve this are a state recommended family size of two children per couple, mandatory government family-planning certification in order to receive a marriage license, and mandatory sexual education in all schools. This bill, in effect, focuses on what will go on in schools before the schools or the roads that lead to them are even built. Rather than looking internally to see what it can do to promote the family and improve their current working and living conditions, the Filipino government would seemingly rather penalize the family unit itself for the nation’s economic ills.
On February 3, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year by urging his citizens to have more children: “We also need Singaporeans to produce enough babies to replace ourselves, and that has proved extremely challenging.” In addition, the PM noted that additional children bring “more joy” to families. The Philippines would do well to heed Mr. Loong’s advice. Not only will they find more joy, but also, like their neighbors in Hong Kong and Singapore, they’re likely to find prosperity.
— Christopher White is international director of operations for the World Youth Alliance.
Michael Gerson writes, “Today, most Catholics vote almost exactly like their suburban neighbors. Catholics are often swing voters in elections precisely because they are so typical. . . . There is something vaguely disturbing about the precise symmetry of any religious group with other voters of their same class and background. One would hope that an ancient, demanding faith would leave some distinctive mark. A reflection may move and smile, but it lacks substance and will.”
Most voters are not swing voters. Most demographic blocs are not swing groups either. Blacks don’t routinely vote for the winner; neither do evangelicals. And the Catholic vote swings more sharply than the overall vote. What’s distinctive about Catholics’ political behavior is staring Gerson in the face.
The Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist contingent of the Democratic party, is disbanding, Politico’s Ben Smith reported yesterday. The reaction from Democratic insiders? No biggie.
“I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised,” William Galston, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, says. Ex-DLC chief Bruce Reed’s decision to join Vice President Joe Biden’s staff last year struck a deadly blow. “It created some questions for the organization that its directors couldn’t resolve — at least not quickly,” Galston says. He also credits the rise of Third Way, a moderate think tank, with sapping DLC’s strength. Unlike the DLC, which focused on the presidency, Third Way concentrated on Congress. “Third Way was founded and grew at a time when the congressional wing of the party was stronger than the presidential wing,” Galston says. “There was an unoccupied niche that Third Way filled, and the two Bush terms were a period in which the DLC was groping for a presidential direction and did not quite find it.”
Speaking more structurally, a senior Democratic aide tells NRO the DLC’s demise “was a long time coming.” “Both of the parties are increasingly ideologically homogeneous,” the aide says. “There’s no longer a vibrant Ripon society in the Republican party, and that is in large part because you have the demise of the Rockefeller Republicans and the conservative Democrats.” (Although this trend is discernible among congressional candidates, it seems less visible among the public.) The aide also identifies the DLC’s support of the Iraq War — and its opposition to Howard Dean — as moments when the organization alienated itself from the Left.
A paradox, the aide adds, is that President Obama is now trying to portray himself as a centrist, and recruiting former DLC members, such as Reed, to high positions in his administration.
One analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute, a separate group that worked in tandem with the DLC for many years, concurs: “Pragmatic centrism has not been the flavor of the Democratic party recently, but all that changed with last year’s election. President Obama now understands that he has to reestablish his standing with independent, moderate voters who were one of the two sturdy pillars of his election.”
In other words, the DLC’s body is dead, but its spirit — at least in part — lives on.
Hernando de Soto explains the connection between the denial of property rights, economic stagnation, and political unrest in Egypt. To my mind he missed an opportunity to use a great illustration of the point. Pete Wehner writes:
It is amazing that the political revolution now sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa was started by a 26-year-old unemployed Tunisian man who self-immolated.
On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a university graduate whose fruits-and-vegetables market stand was confiscated by police because it had no permit, tried to yank back his apples. He was slapped in the face by a female municipal inspector and eventually beaten by her colleagues. His later appeals were ignored. Humiliated, he drenched himself in paint thinner and set himself on fire. He died on January 4.
That incident was the spark that set ablaze the revolution that overthrew President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled Tunisia for more than two decades — and that, in turn, spread to Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign of power is about to end. Anti-government protests are also happening in Jordan, Morocco, Yemen, and elsewhere. It’s hard to tell where all this will end; but how it began may rank among the more extraordinary hinge moments in history. It may come to be known as the Slap Heard Round the World.
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) will hold the first of two hearings on President Obama’s FY 2012 budget a scant 24 hours after that budget is released on St. Valentine’s Day.
According to a release:
Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew will appear on Tuesday, February 15 at 10:00 a.m., and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will appear on Wednesday, February 16 at 2:00 p.m.
According to one poll, agreement on policy is nice, but most Republicans want a winner:
According to CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, nearly seven out of ten Republicans say they would prefer a GOP presidential nominee who can top Obama in the next election, with 29 percent saying a nominee who agrees with them on every issue that matters the most is more important.
Of course, it’s the job of the RNC, a constellation of 501s and third-party boosters, and not least, the candidate him or herself, to make sure the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
I love my fellow conservatives (well, most of them) but often find myself getting very frustrated over an apparent blind spot. There’s this idea that cutting spending is great, except for the military budget, which apparently is sacred. “How much is world order worth?” asked a prominent analyst in the Wall Street Journal the other day. Another big shot opined in Commentary that “serious cuts to the defense budget” necessarily mean that “the armed services are almost certainly going to have to make do in the future with even fewer resources than they have in the past few years.”
This is simply not true. The Department of Defense is a government bureaucracy, cousin to the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the rest. That means it has the same Dawn of the Dead–zombie instincts. Its underlying, primal, blind, grasping need is to feed and repel threats — and always, always to expand itself.
If the U.S. military seems perpetually short on money (as when soldiers in Iraq complained about not having hard-shelled vehicles), it’s because a top layer of bureaucracy soaks up most of the bucks before they can trickle down to the guys on the ground. Conservatives understand this dynamic when applied to the Department of Education, so why not the DOD?
I’m not a line-by-line expert on the military budget, but common sense says there’s a nice layer of lard that can be pared before we hit muscle and bone. Who knows, the services might even work better if forced to run a little leaner. The Marines, the service that gets the least money per capita, is also considered to be the most effective.
At least we could go over the budgets with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. At least we could talk about what we might cut. I put the question of possible cuts to military friends via that great world-changer and regime-toppler Facebook. Here are some of the suggestions they came up with — along with my notes:
● “How about the thousands of troops in Germany and the UK?”
● “All-Army Sports. We have a war going on. We don’t need professional sports teams.” [Did you know that the Army fields its own sports teams? I didn’t, but here’s their website.]
● “The US Army Soldier Show. Yes, it was founded by Irving Berlin, but we need Soldiers in our warfighting units, not tap dancing around the world (literally.)” [Their website. He is not talking about the hallowed USO Shows. Those are a private venture.]
● “The Commander of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service. The PX system does not need a General Officer in command. Hire a competent executive away from Wal-Mart, Sears, or JCPenneys and let him go to town.” [While we’re at it, do we really need expensively-trained servicemen and women manning the base supermarkets and ship’s stores anyway? Isn’t this a job that we might consider privatizing?]
Speaking of wasting trained personnel, that same retired Army man recommends taking a look at “the number of aides-de-camp to General Officers who have that all important duty of holding hats, carrying briefcases, and basically being personal servants. Since most of the servants are commissioned officers, if the duties are so important, then assign them to some wounded enlisted soldiers who are not capable of combat duties.”
Then there are institutions like the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, a group of civilian women assigned a military staff and then mandated to “examine and advise on matters relating to women in the Armed Forces of the United States.” To carry this out, they go on tours of bases, ask a lot of clueless questions to which they’re guaranteed not to get many honest answers, and have big meetings in hotels. Probing the needs of military women may be a worthy mission, but the DACOWITS are redundant. Military women have a lot of outlets for complaints these days, most notably an always receptive media. The DACOWITS’s yearly budget is “only” $700,000 but where there is one DACOWITS there are more.
Here’s another. Could we at least talk about the U.S. Army Veterinary Command? The U.S. military employs many noble animals: bomb-sniffing dogs, mine-spotting dolphins. They get sick, they get wounded (one would imagine especially the dogs deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan), but something about the U.S. Army Veterinary Command raises my excessive bureaucracy radar. Perhaps no one’s looked at its budget since we had a horse-drawn cavalry. Perhaps it’s due.
Turkey’s “mildly” Islamist (to borrow the Economist‘s curious description) Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has been up to his “mildly” authoritarian tricks again. Claire Berlinski has the details:
How certain am I that the world will not notice this development? Oh, 100 percent. It’s one of those little items, again. No one’s reporting it in English. Compared to Iran’s hanging binge, it’s such a modest outrage against civil liberties that who’s going to bother to get exercised about it?But an outrage against civil liberties it is. Erdoğan has begun pressing charges against bloggers whose writings meet with his displeasure. A 22-year-old college student, Barış Ünver, could face two years in prison for intimating that Erdoğan was “the soul mate” of PKK terrorist Ocalan.
Just another reminder that Turkey should have no place in the EU and that those (Barack Obama, David Cameron and others) who suggest that it does have no understanding of Turkey and very little of the EU.
On David Cameron’s speech on multiculturalism in Munich:
This I think is a very important moment in the history of the West. There is a cancer growing inside the West. Some of the leaders have acknowledged it — Angela Merkel of Germany — but mostly it’s been the view of opposition, and the opposition, as in Holland, have been called racist.
When you hear the prime minister of Britain in a coalition government with the liberals expressing this, I think it’s a sign of an important cultural shift. It’s now OK to actually speak the truth. And they are incubating in Britain — because of overt government policy subsidizing these separations, allowing these kind of incendiary anti-western, anti-British, even pro-terrorist speeches, sermons, etc …
You don’t hear a speech like that here, (a), because we do not have the level of isolation and alienation among the Muslim population here as you have in Europe. It’s far more integrated and assimilated.
But secondly because we have a president who doesn’t even speak about radical Islam abroad in real terms. He’ll never use that term or if he does he shies away and he implies it’s “violent extremism” of origins that are entirely unknown. He’s got to be a lot more honest about that.
On Tuesday, I flew to Washington with nine other Ukrainians for the purpose sharing with United States government officials and others our concerns about the increasing repression of civil society in our country. Our delegation included journalists, leaders of civil-society organizations, and three members of the Verhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) including myself. We all felt this mission to be important enough that we left our jobs and other responsibilities and financed our trip in order make sure official Washington understands what is happening in Ukraine.
In the case of those of us who serve in parliament, we left Kyiv on a day when there was a possibility that a terrible piece of legislation might be brought to a vote by the majority coalition in the parliament which would, if enacted, delay parliamentary and presidential elections.
When we arrived at Dulles International Airport I was immediately bombarded by phone messages and e-mail messages asking me how I could possibly have supported such legislation. I could not and did not. Nevertheless the story was being spread in Ukraine that I had cast my vote in favor of the legislation.
This could not be. Each Member of the Rada has their own individual voting card and a vote can only be recorded by using that voting card. Yes, there is a blatantly unconstitutional practice by some in the Rada of voting other member’s voting cards, right in front of the television cameras, but no one could have voted with my card. At the time of the vote my card was in my pocket some 30,000-plus feet above the Atlantic Ocean.
Upon learning about this clear act of voting fraud in the Rada I had one of my colleagues take a picture of me at Dulles Airport holding my voting card in my hand and e-mailed the picture along with my statement back to Kyiv for publication in the Ukrainian press. I also wrote to the chairman of the Rada demanding an investigation. The evidence is overwhelming — somehow the supporters of the legislation to delay elections, President’s Party of Regions, had manipulated Ukraine’s parliamentary voting in order to cast my vote knowing my clear opposition to the legislation, without my voting card and without my knowledge. They were caught, their gross act of political corruption exposed to everyone: genuine transparency.
You would think the only way the Party of the Regions would or could deal with being caught would be to demur to answering questions and announce that it would look into the matter. But normal standards do not apply with the brazen Party of Regions. Members of the Party of Regions bloc in the Rada instead told reporters that they saw me on the floor of the Rada on the Tuesday of the vote! This takes the absurdity of Ukraine’s public corruption to new levels and the timing could not have been better for our delegation.
The Party of Regions allowed this story to spread across the media of Ukraine and to be picked up by international press at the very time our delegation was meeting in Washington to tell of the growing public corruption in Ukraine and the government’s repression of our society. The miscreants made our case for us — a timely, personal and a most transparent example for us to present in Washington. And present it we did.
Our message here in Washington was twofold: Under Ukraine’s new government there is growing repression and yet civil society is alive and vibrant, and needs to be encouraged and supported.
The heroes of the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004 were the people in the streets, the members of civil society who demanded a fair election. Ukraine’s civil society did not collapse with the failure and disappointment of the “Orange” government. The people still expect the kind of government they demonstrated for in 2004 and they are still very active in pursuit of the government they deserve. Ukraine’s civil society is still scoring victories. Peaceful demonstrations in cities all across Ukraine with no politicians involved recently backed the government off an attempt to change the tax code. Other examples of similar success by civil society include a new law to open government files, a law on the right to assemble, and the defeat of a law to make Russian an “official” language as well as Ukrainian.
If the United States genuinely supports democracy it must not accept President Yanukovich’s phony words and must challenge him on the actions of his government, and support and give voice to the people of Ukraine’s civil society.
— Volodymyr Ariev is a member of the Ukrainian parliament.
In the Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel (whom I respect enormously) celebrates the repeal of Obamacare’s 1099 tax reporting requirement, and argues that this is the first step in the piecemeal dismemberment of Obamacare. This view is clearly shared by many Senate Republicans, who are falling over themselves to introduce targeted measures that would eliminate various individual provisions of Obamacare, with the goal of repealing the bill plank by plank.
This may seem like a good idea. But in today’s Washington Post, I argue that by pursuing piecemeal repeal Republicans are walking into a trap Obama set in his State of the Union address. There is no way to repeal Obamacare plank by plank — Democrats will never agree to repeal the provisions that make the legislation such a monstrosity. But they will go along with peripheral changes, like the 1099 repeal. In fact, they will steal the least objectionable Republican ideas, introduce them as their own, and take credit for “fixing” the flaws in the bill (as Sen. Debbie Stabenow did on 1099). By going along with such “fixes,” Republicans will only succeed in lifting pressure for full repeal. And they will help vulnerable Democrats get reelected in 2012 — by allowing them to claim on the campaign trail that they are working to “repeal” the worst parts of Obamacare while keeping the parts of the law that Americans support. Before they know it, Republicans will discover that they have been drawn into a strategy of “fix and save” instead of “repeal and replace.” And they will find that they helped Democrats save Obamacare by stopping Republicans from taking control of the Senate in 2012.
I put it to my friends on the Corner: who’s right?
Al Gore, Arianna Huffington, and Michael Moore, in varying degrees and contexts, have long indicted capitalism for the inequality of its spoils. Yet recent news suggests that their critique of the capitalist status quo is a very good capitalist way of making lots of money. That Gore profited enormously from eco-companies that capitalized on his own global-warming hype, that Arianna Huffington sold her website for $315 million, and that Michael Moore is suing to receive receipts beyond his $20 million take for his anti-Iraq/Bush mythodrama remind us why Barack Obama was the largest recipient of BP and Goldman Sachs campaign money, and indeed of Wall Street cash in history, after being the first presidential candidate to reject the public financing in the general campaign. Does “spread the wealth” rhetoric serve as some sort of pass on overweening desire for lots of cash and nice things?
On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control finally set a release date for their annual report on abortion statistics. The 2007 Abortion Surveillance Report will be published in Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report on February 25, 2011. A number of liberal bloggers, most notably MediaMatters, have been eager to take the pro-life movement to task for our alleged paranoia about the Obama administration’s interest in hiding abortion data.
However, the Monday announcement capped several days of backtracking and mistatements by the CDC — which caused legitimate concern among pro-lifers. The story started on Thursday when Erick Erickson of RedState.com was puzzled as to why the annual Abortion Surveillance Report was not released in November as it had been in years past. After making some phone calls, he got ahold of Rhonda Smith from the CDC’s press office in Atlanta. She stated that the CDC “will not have stats available at any time in the near future” and there “are no plans for them to come out any time soon.”
After RedState.com posted a story about this, the CDC quickly backtracked. They contacted RedState.com and said that the Abortion Surveillance Report is “tentatively scheduled for release this month.” The claimed that the delay was because “the population data needed to develop rate/ratio statistics was not available.” However, even at this time, they did not provide a specific release date for the data. It was not until Monday that the CDC set a release date of February 25.
The whole episode was very puzzling. Every year since 2002, the CDC has always released its annual Abortion Surveillance Report during the last two weeks of November. That did not happen this year. Furthermore, their stated reason for the delay did not add up because the population data necessary to calculate abortion rates and ratios has already been collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. As such, the delay, the backtracking, and the fact that the CDC failed to provide a specific release date until today were all valid reasons for concern.
At any rate, the abortion statistics provided by the CDC will continue to be useful to the pro-life movement. They document the prevalence of abortion in the United States. They have provided evidence of the effectiveness of various types of pro-life legislation. Finally, these statistics offer good evidence of the incremental progress the pro-life movement has made over the years. The pro-life movement, as always, was wise to remain vigilant.
— Michael J. New is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama and a fellow at the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J.
With your forbearance, one more note related to my Impromptus of today. I’ve read an article about Egypt that sort of harmonizes with the column. I talk, in that column, about the Chinese government’s view of patriotism: If you’re with the party — the CCP — you’re patriotic. If you’re not, you’re not. The dictatorship and its fellow travelers refer to citizens loyal to the CCP as “patriotic Chinese.” The “patriotic Chinese,” for example, were thrilled with Lang Lang’s musico-political performance at the White House. The unthrilled were — well, anti-patriots, in the CCP view.
Lang Lang is a vice-chairman of the All China Youth Federation, one of the main party bodies. Oh, he is patriotic! “Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and Jiang Zemin’s Three Represents” — that’s what the federation is pledged to uphold and instill. Can’t get more patriotic than that!
In my view, as regular readers know, the real patriotic Chinese are those who love their country enough to wish it free of dictatorship. I’m talking about Gao Zhisheng, Liu Xiaobo, Wei Jingsheng, Wang Dan, Jianli Yang, and many others who have paid dearly in order to bring about a better life for their fellow Chinese.
Here is an article about a Google executive who was detained in Egypt. An excerpt therefrom:
“This is the revolution of the youth of the Internet and now the revolution of all Egyptians,” [Wael Ghonim] said, adding that he was taken aback when the security forces holding him branded him a traitor.
“Anyone with good intentions is the traitor because being evil is the norm,” he said. “If I was a traitor, I would have stayed in my villa in the Emirates and made good money and said like others, ‘Let this country go to hell.’ But we are not traitors.”
I wanted to write in partial defense of the Army, by offering what I think is a fair indictment of our country at large as it relates to the shortcomings exposed in the recent report. While the investigation certainly raises troubling questions about the Army’s response to the warning signs that surfaced in this case, it seems to me that the purported warning signs themselves raise some awkward questions that our Government, and society at large, don’t want to answer. In particular, I mean the observation, repeatedly decried by liberal and conservative alike, that MAJ Hassan considered himself a Muslim first and American second.
To put it simply, I consider myself a Catholic first and anything else second, be it American citizen, friend, etc. By that I mean if pressed to choose between allegiance to my faith and to my country, I pray for the courage to maintain allegiance to my faith. Now, I have never seen nor do I expect ever to see a time when I would have to make so tragic and terrible a choice. I love my country, and try every day to be a loyal citizen. But my faith demands that I strive to love my God with my whole heart, soul, and strength. And my hope is to follow in the footsteps of St. Thomas More, the patron saint of statesmen, by ensuring that I live as “the King’s faithful servant and God’s first,” whether or not it cost me my life, as it cost him his.
I expect, and hope, that this candid profession would not scandalize many who heard it, but that is because it seems clear to me there is no fundamental conflict between my Catholic faith and its tenets and my responsibilities as an American. So, we must ask those decrying the Army’s failures, should the Army react differently to a Muslim Soldier making the same profession? Although the furor seems to have passed, the same question was raised by the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. Some suggested the ground was too hallowed, but the mosque would have replaced a Burlington Coat Factory. Some prominent conservatives suggested moving it several blocks away, which seems like a neat avoidance of the fundamental issue. Are we, as a country and a government, going to maintain that all religions are equally compatible with American values and civic virtue, or not? This is the uncomfortable question that those who are pointing fingers at the Army should ask themselves.
Below is a translated message from protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. I pass it along without comment:
A message from the protesters in Tahrir Square – Cairo
Monday, February 07, 2011 11:28 PM
It is important to read and circulate this message. It was sent from Tahrir Square. We are youth in Tahrir Square; we are trying to connect with our families and our friends outside the square to respond to the different charges, which we hear in the local Egyptian government-controlled media. We have to express the views of our people stationed in the square about these accusations, including the following:
Myth: 1 – the Muslim Brotherhood is the mechanism of the revolution of January 25 in control of the grassroots
Response: Muslim Brotherhood were not present at all since the beginning of the revolution and began to appear after the first week. Protesters in the Tahrir Square are of all political currents and social backgrounds and different religious and this is reflected in the details of today, there are those who read the Koran and from there playing music, etc… Muslim Brotherhood announced its intention not to run for the upcoming presidential elections. Muslim Brotherhood is part of the Egyptian people and their right to participate in the sit-ins such as the various other trends.
Myth: 2 – Protesters in the square belong to a Liberation Organization and receive funding and that is why all of them slept in identical tents: Response: Protesters in the Tahrir Square come from varying multiple layers of society, some of whom sleep in tents and some of them cannot even sit on the ground. Know that the protesters who are sitting in Tahrir Square displays their lives and the lives of bring them closer to danger, especially after what we saw of bullying and crime last Wednesday of thugs Mubarak and state security. Can all these people that put themselves at risk in exchange for money or an organization? But we are here to defend the principles and achieve our legitimate demands.
Myth: 3 – After 12 days of this sit-you (revolt) you have succeeded “to stop the country” and disrupt the lives of citizens and their jobs, why all this havoc? Response: We’re not imposing a curfew on the Egyptian people, starting at 3 pm in the afternoon. We did not shut off gas stations, fuel, banks and the stock market. We did not withdraw the police from the street and then released the criminals that caused a tremendous amount of lawlessness and insecurity. Egypt lost millions of dollars because of the government’s decision to cut off the Internet on the Egyptian people. Egypt’s losses during the days of the revolution cannot be compared to the robberies carried out by the corrupt government and the Ministry of Interior, which is working to overthrow the people’s revolution to restore the rights of their people.
Myth: 4 – Why do you still remain in Tahrir square are you not satisfied or already seen the changes that the government has made so far? Response: Since the first day of the youth revolution, they chanted the slogan “the people want regime change,” a crossing point for all our demands, we mean the regime of the president and his government, the lying press and the corrupt businesspeople around the regime. We do not deny that the revolution has made many achievements, but still not enough the “template” has not changed. The Peoples’ Assembly (parliament) has not been dissolved and they cannot be trusted to work on changing (reforming) the constitution. The Emergency law still exists and can be used to arrest and for the oppression of all who tried to claim in a peaceful way to change/reform the system. There is still no law that guarantees the freedom to form political parties. So all the changes that have been “made” by the government so far, are merely cosmetic changes that does not mean a real change in the causes we are fighting of corruption, injustice and dictatorship. And we invite all of you to visit us in the Tahrir Square and to spend some time with us and listen to the people. We will stay in liberation square until we are liberated, free!
Let’s stipulate that no matter how softly you put these issues, the strong feelings on either side can make for an acrimonious debate. Let’s concede too that, with the Middle East in turmoil and President Obama spending—er, “investing”—away our future, it’s simply common sense that Republican messaging concentrates on taxes, spending, and keeping America safe from attack. Unfortunately, Mr. Daniels’ “truce” is probably the worst way to get there.
Here’s why. To begin with, the aggression on social issues today emanates mostly from the left, whose preferred vehicle is a willing judge inflicting his private social preferences on the law. Anyone who believes that a Republican call for a truce will end this is living in dreamland.
To the contrary, the agitation will continue. Ultimately it will force a president’s hand on a host of issues—not least his judicial nominees. A far better way to unite Republicans and independents and tea partiers would be to talk about returning these hot-button issues to where they belong: with the states and localities, acting through the people’s elected governors and legislators.
Instead, Mr. Daniels’s truce conveys only that he is afraid to talk about these issues. That fear virtually guarantees that rather than moving on, Mr. Daniels will be constantly forced to explain himself by two groups of people. First will be those who suspect truce really means unilateral surrender. Second will be a press corps that will have great sport fomenting the split in the Republican Party that it is forever predicting.
The former Republican governor of Minnesota in Iowa Monday:
“This notion that if you’re pro-life you can’t get elected, it’s not true, even in Minnesota,” Pawlenty said after his speech. “The goal here isn’t to dilute what we believe in an effort to try to get support from the other side. The goal is to make sure that we stay true to what we believe, our core values and our core principles.”
As you noticed, yesterday was Jeb day on NRO. I wanted to stress one little humble point about my column. While it focused on Jeb Bush, the bigger point was: Don’t be down so early, folks. There is actually some talent and experience on the Right. Mike Pence wasn’t your last best hope!
Officials from Iran and Turkey have announced plans to triple bilateral trade to $30 billion, Agence France Presse reports. Turkish state minister Cevdet Yılmaz said, “Leaders of both the countries have set a clear target for future trade.” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi noted that the two countries have grown closer, with Ankara emerging as a key ally of Tehran in its delicate nuclear negotiations.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration and the Pentagon continue their plans to allow Turkey to purchase the next generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, with its most advanced stealth technology. While Turkey is part of the consortium helping construct the fuselage, Turkey would not have access to the advanced weapons technology until the transfer of completed planes back to Turkey. The Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to demand that the Pentagon conduct a study on the vulnerability of the transfer of its technology. In five or ten years, when it turns out Turkey has allowed Iran to war game against or reverse engineer the cornerstone of our air dominance, remember how Senators Levin and McCain were asleep at the switch.
In my column today, I talk about how important it is not to confuse a people with a dictatorship ruling that people, without consent. Dictatorships want to be thought of as synonymous with the countries they rule. For example, the CCP wants to be thought of as at one with China: and many Westerners, many people in free countries, cooperate. I get mail that says, “Who are we to tell China how to run their country?” Who asked the Chinese, about how their country should be run? Not the CCP. They maintain power by naked force. They proved this in Tiananmen Square.
Writing today’s column, I had a memory from the Elián González affair. Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, speaking on The McLaughlin Group, said, “Frankly, to be a poor child in Cuba may in many instances be better than being a poor child in Miami, and I’m not going to condemn their lifestyle so gratuitously.” Anyone who knows anything about conditions in Cuba, versus conditions in Miami, would find this statement obscene.
Then there is “their lifestyle.” First, the word “their,” as though Cubans have chosen Communism, and all its privations. Second, the word “lifestyle.” Most people, I think, when they think of “lifestyle,” think of trips to the gym, or drinks with umbrellas in them. This Newsweek journalist was talking about a totalitarian society, one of the most brutally regimented and stifled places on earth.
Everyone says stupid things on television, as in life in general. Maybe Clift just had a lapse, and would take it back.
In my view, we should always bear in mind one thing about “nonconsensual societies,” to borrow Robert Conquest’s term: They are nonconsensual. Chinese and Cubans no more want their Communist dictatorships than the Poles did. And if the Communists and their apologists think that the Communists enjoy popular support — let them prove it, in free, multiparty elections. As I say in my column, don’t wait up nights.
In Impromptus today, I have some scribbles on China, and the dictatorship that rules that vast and ancient country. I also have some thoughts on how we in free countries react to that dictatorship. (For one thing, we lay on the dog for them in the White House.) (I’m not suggesting that we serve dog.) It is sometimes claimed that the Communist party has majority support, or at least widespread support, in China. You further hear this about Cuba: that the Communist party enjoys widespread support there. “If the people could vote, they would really show you!” But they never can, can they?
There’s good reason for that. There were a handful of real Communists in the Soviet Union. Experts I trust say there are a handful — a relative handful — of real Communists in China. They rule by brute force.
Some months ago, I was poking around about the Nobel Peace Prize. The winners for 1995 were the Pugwashers and their leading figure, Joseph Rotblat. The Pugwashers? I’m speaking of the men and women of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. This was an anti-nuclear organization, pretty blatantly fellow-traveling. Cry “McCarthyism!” if you want to. (But then, most NRO readers don’t want to.) The record is available for all to see.
The Pugwashers received awards and honors from many of the leading dictators of the Cold War: in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and elsewhere. They held a conference in Poland shortly after General Jaruzelski imposed martial law. Some people asked them not to go there, in a display of solidarity with . . . well, Solidarity, and the Polish people at large. The Pugwashers told them to get lost. The year before, they had denounced Israel for its destruction of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facility. You might have thought that an organization calling itself anti-nuclear would be pleased. You would not have known the Pugwashers.
By the way, the man who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for the group was John P. Holdren. I mention this name because he is the chief science adviser to the 2009 Nobel peace laureate, President Obama. I trust Holdren is better than the worst of the Pugwashers. (The 2010 peace laureate, a Chinese prisoner of conscience, is unavailable to comment on any of this. I don’t think Liu Xiaobo would have given the Pugwashers a peace prize.)
The Pugwashers’ founder was Cyrus Eaton, one of those big businessmen who loved, loved the Soviet Union. Indeed, he was more enthusiastic than Armand Hammer, whom he resembled. Eaton’s hometown, or home village, was a little place in Nova Scotia, Pugwash. (Very beautiful.) The first conference was held at his estate there, in July 1957. It must have been incredibly lovely. Eaton did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, but, quite naturally, he won the Soviet Union’s peace prize: the Lenin Peace Prize, which started out, in the late 1940s, as the Stalin Peace Prize.
They were kind of mean to old Joe, taking his name off things.
Around the time of the Pugwash Conferences’ founding, Eaton gave an interview to Mike Wallace: which can be heard here. He said what all the Communists and fellow travelers were saying — e.g., “There is more spirit of war in the United States than in any other country in the world.” When Wallace pressed him about the lack of freedom in the Soviet bloc — good for Mike! — Eaton said, “If you take a vote in those countries, you might be surprised.”
Yeah, but those votes never take place, do they? They just never do.
Why do two-termers frequently finish on a bad note? Perhaps it’s because they dash into office full of energy, good will and political capital. Then they grow tired and wear out their welcome. Mid-term congressional elections usually erode their power and embolden their foes. Top aides often move on, replaced by second stringers who lack the same level of commitment. When battered incumbents cross the finish line, they’re usually happy to go home.
I’ll suggest an alternative explanation for lousy second terms: the two-term limit! FDR’s second term was a disaster in every way, but did FDR’s third term go badly? Not so clear. Would a younger Ronald Reagan have had a bad third term had it been possible? I’ve been mulling an article or possibly a short book on this subject for a long time, and have asked historians and political scientists for theories about the second-term curse. No one has thought much about it in systematic ways, and I get a wide range of tentative answers. The two-term limit is just one that has come up.
By the way, who is the modern exception to the two-term curse? Ronaldus Magnus, of course, Iran-Contra not withstanding.
Perhaps alone in the coterie focused on the Islamist threat to Europe, I am cheerful these days. That’s because I see the anti-Islamist reaction growing even more quickly than the Islamist threat itself.
The stirring speech by British prime minister David Cameron on Feb. 5, in which he intelligently focused on what he called the “hands-off tolerance” of “Islamist extremism,” including its non-violent forms, exactly fits this pattern.
In similar fashion, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last October deemed multiculturalism to have “utterly failed.” A referendum in Switzerland about minarets manifested the concerns of that country’s population and polling around the continent showed those sentiments to be widely shared.
The rise of respectable political parties primarily focused on the issues surrounding Islam — with Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands at the forefront — is perhaps the single most encouraging sign, compelling legacy parties like the British Conservatives to pay attention.
I differ with many specifics of these initiatives — Anthony Daniels rightly points out, for example, some of what Cameron neglected in his speech — but those are secondary. That, over time, individuals and organizations are finding their voice and are learning strategy and tactics to fend off Islamism gives Europe civilizational hope.
One of the most alarming moments of the latest Live Action Planned Parenthood clinic video comes near the end, when the two investigators ask about what a girl can do after an abortion — because she has to work. She really shouldn’t be engaging in any sexual activity, the Planned Parenthood worker explains, however:
But we do have the women do — honestly I do have girls come in, like 3 days later asking me for the Plan B because they just couldn’t just stop or for whatever reason they just had to.
The British prime minister, David Cameron, spoke recently in Luton, a town long and universally despised in Britain by all who do not live there, against multiculturalism as an official doctrine and policy. He could hardly have chosen a time or a place more certain to stir up controversy: the day of his speech, members of the thuggish and fascistic English Defence League marched through Luton, nine of whose 23 Labour councilors (the largest party on the town council) are Muslim. There was one Muslim among the councilors of the other parties. There are no prizes for guessing, therefore, which party supports the expenditure of public money to support projects that supposedly benefit officially designated minorities, or at any rate minority “leaders.”
Much of what Mr. Cameron said was perfectly sensible, moderate, and self-evident. Many Muslims want to be absorbed seamlessly into British life; others want the imposition of sharia law, flirt with terrorism, and demand censorship of views that they find distasteful. There is no reason for anyone to make any accommodation whatsoever with the latter.
However, when Mr. Cameron spoke of “British values,” he seemed to be speaking of a golden age of high Edwardian liberalism, rather than the Britain of today, which is far from a liberal state (in the Edwardian sense) where freedom flourishes. On the contrary, he is the head of a bloated, bullying but ineffectual government apparatus that weighs very heavily on the population and acts as a thick pall of pollution over the whole society.
Here are just a few of the facts to which he might have addressed himself: Britain has the highest crime rate in Western Europe, despite having a third of all the closed-circuit television cameras in the world to oversee the population, and despite having more or less abandoned a suspect’s right to silence. There are whole areas of the country in which the weight of the state in the economy is not far short of that of the state in Soviet Russia. Thanks to state-sponsored social pathology, more than a third of the population is entirely dependent on the state for its livelihood, and would starve without it. The last government created a new criminal offense every working day for ten years, such that no citizen can possibly know what is legal and what is not. Arbitrary and constantly changing regulation makes life a nightmare for anyone running a business or a service. While expenditure on education doubled between 2000 and 2007, the proportion of British children learning a foreign language declined by 75 percent. In short, the British state is a swamp of corruption, all the worse for being more intellectual and moral than straightforwardly financial.
In other words, multiculturalism, while being part of this swamp, is only a small part of it. It is unlikely that Mr. Cameron will do much to drain it.
That’s what Live Action’s investigator posing as a pimp was told on January 14 at a Bronx, New York, Planned Parenthood clinic when he expressed his need to get tests and maybe abortions for girls as young as 14.
Not only is that not a problem, but the clinic worker offers: “We see people as young as 13 . . . everything is totally confidential.”
But by now — this is Live Action’s sixth video in its latest series — what else have we come to expect from a Planned Parenthood clinic worker but a willingness to advise a sex trafficker? And in this latest video we are in the abortion capital, after all.
When the investigator who presented himself at the clinic as a pimp expressed concern that the girls he needs to get to the clinic don’t have proper identification (they’re illegal, he said, some Thai) or proof of employment (they’re prostitutes) the Planned Parenthood worker advised him to write a letter vouching for a given girl. “They don’t even call you,” she assured him.
Here’s more of the conversation:
Pimp: Could we even sign off as guardians? Could we even sign off as a guardian, is that even possible?
Planned Parenthood Staffer: If you were writing the support letter, yeah, you could say –
Prostitute: Oh good
Planned Parenthood Staffer: that you take care of them, you support them.
Pimp: Cool.
Planned Parenthood Staffer: But nothing here, like, our patients, we don’t ask for guardian’s signature. Everything is the patient. Like a thirteen-year-old could come in and get the services she needed, by herself.
****
Pimp: So, how would you recommend for them best to do it? Cause we don’t want them getting confused or what not, and it’s kind of a sensitive subject, so we don’t want you know, them saying the wrong thing, you know getting refused or turned away, so how would you suggest they go about you know being able to get the access even in spite of what they do, you know?
Planned Parenthood Staffer: Yeah, like, like I said everything’s confidential, they don’t have to tell anybody what it is that they do when they make an appointment, it’s just gonna be between them and the Physician they see.
Yes, sure wouldn’t want 13- or 14- or 15-year-old sex slaves to slip up and stumble into freedom.
Today is the 150th birthday of the Confederate constitution. Over at the NYT, I explain a couple of its good ideas:
The Confederate document contained another great idea that would certainly upgrade our own Constitution: it limited the president to a single term of six years.
I had honestly forgotten there was such a thing. (Not Boston Market, passed one just yesterday. Current TV. Never even seem to have the opportunity to pass it up.)
When I heard the news last night, I had an Al-Franken-Air-America flashback. Worse, I then realized this could be a stepping stone to “Senator Olbermann.”
The New York Times is reporting that Keith Olbermann may be heading to Al Gore’s Current TV, whose business model apparently involves keeping itself secret from viewers.
Personally, I was hoping he’d return to Boston Market:
Sen. Jim DeMint, the conservative star from South Carolina, is keeping a close eye on the emerging 2012 presidential field. New names, he observes, keep popping up. One of those, of course, is former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Rich, Kathryn, and John have all written about Bush’s appeal in recent days.
DeMint, in an interview with National Review Online, calls Bush “one of the best” possible presidential contenders. “Maybe the person we are looking for has not stepped out yet; it could be a Rick Perry or a Jeb Bush.”
“[Bush] would be a really good president and a good candidate,” DeMint says. “He had a solid record as governor; he showed that he was willing to push innovative things in education and elsewhere.”
DeMint says President Obama is “clearly beatable.” But the GOP nominee, he argues, will need to be formidable, since the president may be able to bounce off of a rebounding economy. Numerous potential candidates, he says, “are watching to see where Obama’s popularity will be. A lot is going to depend on whether people believe that he has anything to do with the economy coming back. And it will come back; you can’t keep the American economy down.”
NRO wonders: In coming months, if Bush and other conservative favorites decide to sit out 2012, will DeMint feel compelled to jump in? “I really am trying to avoid that,” he tells us. “I’m looking for good candidates out there in the field.”
“I would have to feel a strong pull from people all over the country,” DeMint says. “Again, it’s not something that, right now, appears to be in my future.”
But could a grassroots ‘Draft DeMint’ movement stir him to run? “I don’t want to suggest that I’m waiting for any kind of draft,” he says. “It’s really not what I want to do. I really don’t have any intention of running. . . . I’m not ruling anything out, but it’s not something I want to do.”
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