Archives for October 2004

Victor Davis Hanson has an insightful op-ed column up.

Yet the true nature of our loud divisiveness is rarely remarked upon. In the last three decades, there has been a steady evolution from liberal to moderately conservative politics among a majority of the voters, whether gauged by the recent spate of Republican presidents or Bill Clinton’s calculated shift to the center. Now the House, Senate, presidency and the majority of state governorships and legislatures are in Republican hands. A Bush win will ensure a conservative Supreme Court for a generation.

In contrast, the universities, the arts, the major influential media and Hollywood are predominately liberal — and furious. They bring an enormous amount of capital, talent, education and cultural influence into the political fray — but continue to lose real political power. The talented elite plays the same role to the rest of America as the Europeans do to the United States — venting and seething because the supposedly less sophisticated, but far more powerful, average Joes don’t embrace their visions of utopia.

Elites from college professors and George Soros to Bruce Springsteen and Garrison Keillor believe that their underappreciated political insight is a natural byproduct of their own proven artistic genius, education, talent or capital. How then can a tongue-tied George W. Bush and his cronies so easily fool Americans, when novelists, actors, singers, comedians and venture capitalists have spent so much time and money warning them of their danger?

For all Sean Penn’s rants, Rather’s sermons, Michael Moore’s mythodramas and Jon Stewart’s postmodern snickers, America, even in times of a controversial war and rocky economy, is still not impressed. National Public Radio, “Nightline” and the New York Times are working overtime to assert their views in this philosophical debate; Jimmy Carter and Al Gore — not George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole — are fuming. Most Americans snore or flip the channel.

It is apparently a terrible thing to be sensitive, glib, smart, educated or chic — and not be listened to, as we have seen from this noisy and often hysterical campaign among elites. That is the real divide in this country, and it is only going to get worse.

Anyone for whom this is in any way a surprise really needs to reevaluate their skills of perception, assuming they have any.

(via Hit & Run)

I’m certainly not the first to point this out, but those who are either elated or disgusted at the recent story regarding the disappearance of nearly 400 tons of munitions in Iraq ought to consider the following.

1. If they were there after the US troop presence or not, why are they a concern now? Iraq was not a danger, right? Not threat, right? There were no significant weapons, right?

2. If 400 tons of explosives were there before the invasion but not when US troops arrived on scene, as claimed by the embedded NBC reporter, then they must have been spirited away before we got there. If Iraq was able to accomplish that effectively, then is it not likely to assume that they did the same with far less weighty munitions, such as chemical and biological weapons and anything to do with a nuclear weapons program? In other words, bringing this story up completely undercuts any claim you can make that there were likely no WMDs on the basis that we have not found any.

To restate my longstanding position for purposes of clarification, going into Iraq on the basis of WMDs was dumb. It was dumb then, and it’s still dumb, dumb, DUMB. The justification for taking Iraq was simply that it was the next logical offensive step strategically. It’s no more complicated than that.

I wonder if the ‘Elect Kerry 2004’ campaign staff at the NYTs asked themselves if the missing explosives story was just too good to be true before running with it.

Apparently not.

Remember the groundbreaking John Howard Griffin book, published first in 1961 about a white guy who disguises himself as black and travels around the south—in 1959?!?

Well not in the same league, and there was nothing in Griffin’s experiences to laugh at, but Richard Rushfield has a hilarious article in Slate about pretending to be a campaign-paraphernalia garbed Kerry-Edwards supporter in Bush country, and conversely, a Bush-Cheney supporter in the blue regions.

Read and laugh.

(via Michael Totten)

I read and I laugh.

Listen, I’m perfectly happy if no one at all votes. As it is, nearly half of eligible voters don’t vote, and I’m happy to see that number increase. But given that everyone who votes is implicitly going there in hopes of securing a majority (might makes right) to force me to do what they cannot otherwise persuade me to do (or pay for), then I certainly do hope that those who engage in this practice have some brains.

It was the famous novelist Robert A. Heinlein who once suggested that voting booths be locked, and in order to gain access, a potential voter had to first solve a simple quadratic equation.

Well, that would certainly be a far cry from the wringing of hands for “the disenfranchisement of minority voters.” In Heinlein’s world, the fact that you’re able to get your dumb ass to a voting booth in the first place is merely assumed.

(via John Venlet)

That’s me.

It’s also Jonathan Wilde, who aptly describes why, and why that’s better for everyone.

It must be realized that liberty without security is worthless.

Philosopher Bill Vallicella in an interesting post that exposes how the left and left libertarians butcher the meaning of liberty by taking it completely out of context. And, contrary to Bush’s declaration in debate #3, liberty is not a gift from the almighty. It’s a value that’s earned and guarded, often at great price.

But it’s no surprise. Most people on the left I’ve encountered throughout my whole life seem to have missed that earliest of parental lessons: “money doesn’t grow on trees.” Neither do any of our core values, including liberty or security.

(via Burgess-Jackson)

The great conflict of the 21st century may be between the West and terrorism. But terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The underlying battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernist fanatics; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe blind allegiance to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is no more than preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe that truth is revealed solely through scripture and religious dogma, and those who rely primarily on science, reason, and logic. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism is not the only danger we face.

Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton.

We do ourselves well to understand the underlying nature of this conflict. In its simplest form, it is a battle between faith and reason; between individualism and collectivism masked in religious dogma; between self-guidance and authoritarian rule from a pulpit. I cringe each and every time I hear Bush, Kerry, or anyone else invoke his God as authority and justification for the task at hand. It is the belief in the primacy of faith over reason that is at the root of all of this, and evangelicals whom we are told are going to make the biggest difference for Bush this year, and all others who vow allegiance to a religion should clearly understand that their own philosophical house is not clean.

I understand that modern western religions over the past couple of centuries have demonstrated an ability to move with the times, for the most part. So, pragmatically, I’m willing to call them my friends—for now. But I also understand that people can exist as walking contradictions only to a point. Clearly, the fundamentalists of Islam have been pushed past their point. Modernity is a threat to their religious beliefs, and rather than modernize their beliefs, they wish to destroy modernity.

But modernity also has shown itself to advance at an ever-increasing rate. Will its advances eventually outpace the demonstrated resilience of modern religions? What happens, for instance, if cloning, stem cell, genetic engineering, or as-yet-unimagined technologies advance us to a point where we “overcome God,” i.e., cure physical death? What then? Do we then have another group of terrorists to contend with, wanting to smash the modernity that threatens their primacy of belief?

Do you see? The premises are identical. It is only the degree to which things differ.

It goes without saying that most of the significant turning points in history came about as a consequence of decisions made by men, not women. It’s simply a fact. One may second-guess all they want about where we’d be in the meta-cosmic sense had men been generally less aggressive throughout history. My own speculation, for what it’s worth, tells me that the innate aggressiveness in men, turned to good, is the only force capable of defeating the innate aggressiveness of men turned to bad.

You’re welcome to disagree. Here’s another take on it.