Obama’s Bait and Switch Routine

In much of America, if Karl Marx is known at all, he’s considered a bad person:  the intellectual grandfather of Communism and an enemy of organized religion, and thus an opponent of the traditional American way of life. 

This is not so everywhere, such as on elite college campuses or Obama’s Trinity Church (with its unique take on liberation theology), nor in the community organizing circles where Obama spent much of his young adulthood.  There’s a reason that former Weather Underground terrorists are employed as academics.  Marx is popular there, as is his disregard for “individualized justice” as a bourgeois anachronism.  Power to the people!

It’s more than a little bit amusing to see Joe Biden and others work so hard to ridicule the very suggestion that Obama’s program might have something in common with the ideas of Karl Marx.  Indeed, what else would Obama’s promised economic redistributionism be other than a Fabian-Trotskyite strategy of transforming a capitalist society?

Andrew Sullivan quite remarkably argues that Obama’s early 2000s radio interview discussing the Warren Court shows that Obama is in fact a conservative decrying judicial activism.  Even allowing some correction for Sullivan’s hero-worship of Obama, this is quite a stretch. If you admit the possibility that intelligent people might be extremely liberal–even socialists–then it’s clear that Obama wasn’t saying anything conservative.  Only the results-oriented prejudice that Obama can’t be that liberal compels Sullivan, Biden, and others to dissemble on Obama’s behalf. 

Obama was quite clearly saying that the notoriously activist Warren Court was, in fact, not activist enough.  He was making a descriptive statement.  He thinks it missed the boat by not also recognizing so-called positive rights, such as the right to a job, healthcare, a share of national wealth, etc.  University of Chicago liberal Mortimer Adler said something very similar in Six Great Ideas, which was basically a Great Books defense of democratic socialism, and this idea was very current among legal academics at this time.

Since the Courts would not go down this road, Obama thinks the civil rights movement should have shifted its focus onto the legislative and presidential branches.  Obama never says the Warren Court was right not to make such rulings . . . simply that it didn’t.  Procedural niceties are of little moment when “economic justice” is on the line.  Obama’s pursuit of the presidency is the fulfillment of Obama’s judgment about the strategic mistakes of the 1960s-era civil rights movement.

His discussion of community organizing at the end of his earlier interview is hardly a lament for the absence of a vibrant civil society, that is, a saccharine suggestions that blacks and whites should have formed Boy Scout Troops and midnight basketball leagues and other grass-roots approaches to supporting vulnerable, impoverished families.  It’s a lament that the civil rights movement was content with, well, civil rights.  Obama recognizes that in the last 40 years, that is after Jim Crow and other ugly and un-Christian impositions on people’s lives and livelihoods were taken away, many blacks were content to get on with their lives, achieving the American dream of upward mobility. The whole point of community organizing is to stop this process and keep people mad, to get communities riled up to seek money and power through the government, and to prevent disunity. It’s designed to coalitions among the “dispossessed” across economic, racial, and other lines to prevent economic attrition of natural leaders by their movement into the more conformist and less alienated suburbs.

It is this “contentment” and movement to the suburbs–i.e. the traditional American dream–that Rev. Jeremiah Wright condemns so forcefully.  Just to give a sense of time and place, when I was in Chicago in the 90s, a popular poster said, “Bomb the Suburbs.”  To Rev. Wright, and apparently to Obama, the civil rights movement is not over until the government is yoked and directed by community organizers and their agitated constituencies.  The conservative criticism that the welfare state rewards idleness, promotes poor decision-making, and stifles economic growth is largely absent from Obama’s worldview.  Indeed, it is this system of rewards and punishments and “trickle down economics” that is the problem to him and others of his far left ideological worldview.  The traditional capitalist way is, for them, unjust, unfair, ridden with corruption, “institutionally” racist, and leads to “false consciousness” even where it seems to succeed.

The whole point of Obama and his One America rhetoric is to get everyone united over the transformational power of fleecing the rich . . . this, a group that will soon have to be defined very expansively to achieve Obama’s ambitious agenda.

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An Imaginary Edmund Burke

I have a long essay up at Takimag.com on Edmund Burke.  I criticize the modern tendency to invoke Burke for liberal causes, as if his concerns were chiefly procedural.  Burke’s philosophy is much more than a habitual disposition to gradualism and decentralization.  The content of political activity matters.  I write, among other things:

Burke’s latest fans, however, misunderstand something important about Burke and his philosophy by abstracting from his ouevre only the following two ideas:  (1) criticism of ideological fanaticism, particularly the concern with uniformity, and (2) Burke’s promotion of gradualism under the rubric of “organic change.” Burke had many more themes, all of which find echoes in conservative thinkers today.  For example, Burke also defended the necessity of social inequality, political authority over moral matters, organized religion (including state support of the same), sound money, chivalry and traditional sex roles, and traditional political institutions, most notably in the form of hereditary monarchy.  Burke was neither a libertarian, nor a Classical Liberal.  He famously sparred with Thomas Paine, who penned his obnoxious work, The Rights of Man, as a criticism of Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. 

Modern “Burkeans,” who defend such varied matters as universal healthcare and gay marriage in Burkean terms, effectively cut Burke’s philosophy in half, focusing exclusively on his concerns for procedure and the pace of political action, while distorting or ignoring Burke’s more controversial treatment of the substantive ends of politics.

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Obama’s True Believers

Even Obama’s white supporters were starting to get put off by what Reverend Wright implied about Barack Obama. But they’re all back on board now . . . most especially, Andy Sullivan.  The candidate of few accomplishments–legislative or otherwise–calmed them down once again with the right words. 

He’s the candidate of hopeful words, after all.  His speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention propelled him into the limelight.  Since then he’s carefully–oh, so carefully–positioned himself for the national run.  He’s avoided controversial votes and controversial people.  Wright was the exception; he needed Wright back in the day to get an entree into South Side Chicago politics, and, Obama was loyal to him for this reason.  Obama also had an emotional connection with Wright: the reverend and the scene at Trinity gave Obama the authentic blackness he has obsessed about since high school. 

But Obama’s essentially a pundit running for president.  Where leadership, tough choices, and tangible work were required–with Wright, in the Senate, as a law professor–Obama’s nowhere to be found.  He makes mistakes of judgment because he’s unwilling to take risks.  But his true believers are always willing to be sweet talked back into his arms.  All is forgiven; in this case, 20 years of membership in a black racist church coupled with the unbelievable alibi that he never heard any of this crazy nonsense from Wright until recently, even though his talk is a core expression of black liberation theology. 

In the meantime, conservatives are castigated for suspicious that these words were opportunistic, too late, slightly dishonest, and the product of political necessity.  In the minds of Obama’s true believers, something is wrong with us for being skeptical about a smooth-talking, liberal, Chicago politician seeking national office.

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Obama and the Swift-Boaters

Andrew Sullivan complains that Obama is being “swift boated.”

Swift Boating

=

Truthful recitation of facts and reasonable inferences from the same that a candidate’s supporters would prefer no one knew about, e.g., racist church memberships, defamatory rhetoric about one’s fellow Vietnam veterans.

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Sully’s Breakup With Ron Paul

Sullivan’s been praising Ron Paul and his awesome youth movement for months now.  But now he’s sad to learn that Paul’s youth movement was once a “good ol’ boy” movement that used to make fun of “welfare queens,” yankees, and “homos.” 

Did I call this or what:

Ron Paul only appeals to Sullivan because he’s a gadfly who shares Sullivan’s (au courant) view that the Iraq War is a mistake. As with Bush, whose “compassionate conservatism” once appealed to Sullivan’s gobbeldy-gook moderate views, Sullivan’s romantic sentiments will soon be dashed by some expression of a genuinely conservative viewpoint by Paul, such as his opposition to civil rights laws. At that point, expect Sullivan to return to his tried-and-true modus operandi: hysterical denunciation of yet another heart-breaking politician who has the temerity not to agree with him on everything.

I predict libertarianism will always be a fringe movement.  Because people that care about the liberties it embraces today–drugs, abortion, gay rights–also believe strongly in social equality.  And people that believe in social equality are by definition people that think discrimination is a great evil; it’s hard to sustain the deontological embrace of complete freedom (outside violence) when one’s view of liberty would permit a great evil.  Thus Sullivan’s liberalism trumps his libertarianism, and we’ll see something similar from most other left-libertarians.  This was the basic historical trajectory, incidentally, of Classical Liberalism.

Conservative-leaning libertarians may well stay libertarian, but they have a more abiding substantive reason to do so and will continue to form the base of practical libertarian voters:  They’re in society’s productive class and don’t like the government taking their money to subsidize disorderly parasites. Of course, as men of a conservative bent, they won’t lose any sleep over gay marriage or other social innovations supposedly required by doctrinaire libertarianism.

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Sullivan on Ron Paul

Andrew Sullivan’s excited about Ron Paul. Not too surprising, since he’s something of a libertarian.  Of course, he’s also excited about Obama.  Sullivan’s torn between his social and economic liberalism.  He also is carried away by the “youth movement” aspect of both campaigns. 

In discussing an esoteric philosophical discussion among off-duty Paul volunteers, Sullivan notes, “There’s something real there. And something so new the GOP doesn’t want it.”  Uh, no.  It’s called a fringe group.  These groups attract intense, earnest volunteers.  Their fringness explains their intensity and also their un-electability.  I’ve been at ISI events where we discussed whether the Constitution was unconstitutional because of the unanimity requirements of the Articles of Confederation.  For some reason, I don’t see the Sam Francis wing of the party gaining on account of our moral seriousness.

Ron Paul is not affecting this race in any real way because 90% of the Republican Party wants a strong national security candidate, and Paul isn’t it. They also want someone who won’t legalize drugs, permit gay marriage, and all the rest.  Thought he’s made noises about border security, his empty vessel concept of American identity doesn’t inspire restrictionists to believe he’ll stick to it.  Finally, we’d like someone with a shot of winning, not the Republican version of McGovern.

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Web Round Up

Lots of interesting things going on out there in the blogosphere.

Lawrence Auster takes Charles Johnson of LGF to task for his idiosyncratic anti-left and anti-right criticism of Islam.  For Johnson, everyone that doesn’t dislike Muslims as much as Charles Johnson while also disliking Europeans as much as Charles Johnson is a fascist and anti-Semite.  For all his popularity with knuckle-draggers, Johnson’s view is thoroughly modern and useless because it inevitably alienates Christians, Europeans, and everyone but Israel in the fight against radical Islam. Well, guess what, this may take some cooperation.

Jared Taylor cooly explains why the “achievement gap” in our schools isn’t going anywhere soon.

The War Nerd enjoys the Southern California fires.

Redacted sounds like typical Hollywood anti-war insanity. Hold your breath for a movie about Paul Smith or other heroes of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Andrew Sullivan approvingly quotes the utter apotheosis of the “Natural Republican” theory, applying it to Barack Obama, a well-known liberal and Democratic Party candidate for President.

Kathleen Parker echoes Tom Wolfe’s noting that the “hook up” culture on campus leads to spiritual and physical pain.

Robert Levy roots for the Second Amendment in an upcoming Supreme Court case.  I join him in hoping the Supreme Court will put some teeth in the amendment, of course.

Ace rains on Al Gore’s parade citing a study that the Arctic Ocean changes may likely be naturally occurring.

A Vermont blogger has an interesting discussion of paleoconservatism versus traditionalist conservatism.

Jim Kalb reviews a book by Thomas Molnar on the purpose of philosophy.

Child rapist and murderer continues to gum up the machinery of justice delaying his well-deserved execution, even though everyone knows he is guilty of an atrocity.

New piston-based operating systems for the AR-15 should rival the excitement that greets new operating systems for computers.  This change might actually lead to saved lives and a cleaner, more effective infantry weapon.  Of course, the sclerotic Pentagon bureaucracy will sit on this for who knows how long. But hopefully it works as advertised and will lead to the adoption of the HK 416 or a similar platform to succeed the finicky M4.

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An Imaginary Ronald Reagan

Someone over at Sully’s site writes:

I sometimes wonder what Reagan would have to say about where our country has careened since 9/11.  We openly debate torture as a policy, allow unprecedented access to personal information, and tolerate secret prisons devoid of oversight.

Well, let’s look at how he approached the wars in El Salvador and Central America.  Liberals criticized him extensively for allowing American Special Forces to train and cooperate with “death squads.”  This was considered a great moral failing of America and the seeds of “another Vietnam.”  Bush is no Reagan, but Bush’s willingness to be aggressive in the war on terror is not one of the reasons.  People forget that Reagan’s “optimism” was a function of his belief in America and American power.  It stood in contrast to the dim pessemism of the Democratic Party, which was dejected after Vietnam and willing to accomodate Soviet expansion globally.

No one quite knows what Reagan would have thought about torturing a small number of guys like Khalid Sheik Mohammad and Ramzi bin Alsheib.  But his record shows he wasn’t Pollyannaish about the bad guys, nor was he particularly wary of engaging in extra-legal activities behind closed doors–e.g., arms-for-hostages—to accomplish the broader mission.  Among other events, he bombed Libya without Congressional authorization in response to terrorism and was also known for his rough treatment of hippie rioters as Governor of California.  Reagan likely would not have shied from “waterboarding” or anything else he deemed necessary to win the war against al Qaeda.

Libertarians and moderate conservatives are enamored of an imaginary Ronald Reagan, a sainted figure misconstrued through the distortions of gauzy nostalgia.

 

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Is Ron Paul Nuts?

I don’t think Ron Paul is nuts, but all too many of his supporters are, and he does little to rein in their juvenile conspiracy thinking. Their diatribes make last decade’s Waco and Randy Weaver legends appear sane in comparison. Now, when we think of those who stick to reasoned arguments and avoid guilt-by-association and ad hominem arguments, one name that usually does not come to mind is that of Andrew Sullivan. He’s famous for castigating his opponents as hate-mongers and “Christianists.” He has a rabid hatred for Bush based largely, it appears, on Bush’s opposition to gay marriage. So lately he’s enamored of Ron Paul, whose rhetoric appeals to the Constitution-lover in all of us. Yet Paul can’t win. He is too dismissive of the threat of terrorism. He can’t think of a principled reason to oppose mass immigration. His willingness to embrace states’ rights would soon alienate many of his supporters, not least folks like Sullivan who don’t want states to ban gay marriage (or permit segregated schools), both of which would be allowed in Ron Paul’s universe.

Sullivan seems to have forgotten what is normally important to him; he notes that among Bush’s people “you will hear Paul described as ‘nutty’ and anti-Semitic and fringe and marginal and on and on . . .” Well, isn’t this funny, considering how often Sullivan employs this line of argument against anyone that disagrees with his thoroughly radical view of family life, or his defense of pederasts, or his hatred of Evangelicals (and the leadership of the Catholic Church), or the like.

You see, for most people, including Sullivan, liberalism is simply obvious; it’s in the air that they breathe. Its premises, its controversies, and its narrow range of thinking are beyond question. Those who deviate are utterly baffling to liberals, who presume their traditionalist critics are malevolent.  Incidentally, Ron Paul does not deviate from this orthodoxy; he’s just an old-line classical liberal who accepts the fundamental liberal view that society has no particular purposes other than the facilitation of individual desires. To think outside of liberal individualism, to acknowledge some prudential limit on a libertarian or liberal viewpoint, to suggest that something is owed to society or the past or the state is anathema. Because rationalistic liberalism, of which libertarianism is just an off-shoot, by its nature does not have any internal limiting principles. Society must be organized according to its rationalist and materialist lines or, according to its logic, the absolute demands of “human rights” are being violated. This is not the politics of balance and prudence and compromise, but the total politics of ideology. With such totalism comes the ritual denunciations of others as Christianists, haters, war-mongerers etc.

Ron Paul only appeals to Sullivan because he’s a gadfly who shares Sullivan’s (au courant) view that the Iraq War is a mistake. As with Bush, whose “compassionate conservatism” once appealed to Sullivan’s gobbeldy-gook moderate views, Sullivan’s romantic sentiments will soon be dashed by some expression of a genuinely conservative viewpoint by Paul, such as his opposition to civil rights laws. At that point, expect Sullivan to return to his tried-and-true modus operandi: hysterical denunciation of yet another heart-breaking politician who has the temerity not to agree with him on everything.

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Water Boarding, Torture, and Guerrilla Theater

Water boarding is perhaps the mildest torture there is in terms of safety, permanent damage, and the like.  It’s also one of the most effective.  Whether it’s ever justified, volunteering to have it performed on oneself is likely not the best way to demonstrate its horrors.  Yet, for some reason, this kind of “guerrilla theater” is back in fashion.

Consider this:  no one volunteers for the Guillotine or the Rack; no one volunteers to be burned with a blow torch or subject to the application of needle-nosed pliers.  Water boarding is effective because it produces terror; it does so because it somehow triggers a deep, primeval fear of drowning.  I’m not convinced this technique is useful, necessary, or worth the public relations damage it causes.  I believe torture should not be part of our laws or authorized bag of tricks for the military or the CIA.  It may be pardonable at best, but it is degrading to our national honor to embrace this dreadful business whole-heartedly in our laws.  Even so, there are worse symbols of torture than water-boarding.    It’s a clean technique, almost clinical.  It does not occasion horror in the observer, not least when one is watching this “torture” accepted voluntarily by a hippie protester.

The Bush administration has, for better or worse, followed the counsel of legally-minded types–including Alan Dershowitz–that interrogation techniques should be regulated, disallowing any real discretion among those doing the dirty work.  Water-boarding is the symbol of the handful of “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed by the Bush administration because harsh physical tortures seem largely absent from the CIA and military’s well-regulated repertoire.  Torture opponents increasingly discredit themselves as the boys-who-cried-wolf, having spent inordinate energy on the ultra vires psychological humiliations inflicted at Abu Ghraib, while ignoring the more disturbing and disorderly killings of civilians in places like Hamdania and Haditha.  (Of course, critics completely ignore the various horrors inflicted by al Qaeda, such as the torture and murder of Nick Berg, Daniel Pearl, and countless Iraqi civilians.)  Worse, by not acknowledging the loss of life that might arise from an exquisite concern for human rights among captured members of al Qaeda, torture opponents avoid having a mature debate with their opponents.

In the scheme of morality, the duties owed to captured terrorists are some of the least compelling and the most debatable.  We’re not talking about the mistreatment of uniformed conscripts doing their duty for their country.  We’re talking about people who can and should be executed under the law of war for their actions, their techniques, and their fundamentally criminal purposes.  Perhaps they shouldn’t be tortured, but the acknowledgment of this moral duty among a normal, patriotic American should be a grudging one.  Because it is perfectly healthy and natural as an emotional matter to want to torture a member of al Qaeda and show him no quarter.

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The Economy and the State

Andrew Sullivan, as usual, is confused and lets himself get carried away when it comes to homosexuality. He notes, “In 1994, just 19 Fortune 500 brands advertised in the gay press. Last year, 183 did.”

He concludes solemnly, “The private sector has long led the government in recognizing the simple reality of gay America.”

Umm, no. The government has always recognized this just fine when it is relevant, and it certainly can’t be said to have ignored gays in the bygone age of criminal sodomy laws. No, the government treats us all the same, except when we’re different in a relevant way. It doesn’t need to recognize the “gay reality” more than any other. The government and its laws rightfully do not care if we have long or short hair, or if we spend our money on books or on CDs, or if we are stylish or dull. A gay person’s legal reality is no different than anyone’s else. A gay person can call 911, file a lawsuit, and apply for a student loan. And, of course, a gay person can marry a person of the opposite sex just like everyone else. What Sullivan really is saying by innuendo is the theme underlying so much of his writing: since esteemed big businesses don’t seem to get hung up on gays, and indeed make money marketing to them, why can’t I and every other gay person get my surrogate daddy’s approval through government-recognized gay marriage? I hate to be so harsh, but this theme runs through his and all other gay people’s appeals to acceptance rather than mere toleration.

Of course, the difference between the government and the market is profound. It is the differences between law and its attendant social approval on one side and voluntary, private arrangements on the other. The government does sometimes care if we’re a man or a woman, or a citizen or a foreigner, or any number of other distinctions. In these areas, the law’s otherwise one-size-fits-all rules recognize that people are not equal in all respects. But these exceptions are exactly that: exceptional. For the most part, the law treats all of us the same.

Businesses are quite different, since there is a great deal of money to be made by appealing to niche markets. Thus, instead of one movie or one book or one type of car or one type of music, there are many examples of each. Unlike the laws, the market and its participants gain a great deal by recognizing our differences in finer and finer detail. This doesn’t prove that the business world is more decent than the government, but rather that it functions differently. It appeals to our voluntary choices, does not use force against us, primarily seeks to make a profit, and does not purport to codify our moral sensibilities.

Indeed, the behavior of businessmen historically shows that they are prone to avarice and indifference to the common good and should, therefore, be appropriately regulated to prevent anti-social activity. Businesses, after all, have sold everything from radar detectors and unsafe cars to Olde English 800 and security systems for drug lords. Various businesses might appeal to gays–gay people do, after all, have money–but they also appeal to everyone else: good, bad, and indifferent. Government, with an entirely different set of tools and concerns must keep people and their businesses within certain boundaries. It must bestow its benefits parsimoniously. And this means, at times, it must operate far behind the curve of social change, lest faddishness be enshrined in law, e.g., urban renewal, prohibition.

Sullivan’s lazy, hair-brained, and easily refuted blog entries are a real disgrace to his own intellect and an insult to his numerous readers. His latest example of sophistry is, sadly, just one of many.

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The Perks of Polarization

I’m extremely wary of those who spend too much time focusing on tactics, tone, and the alleged incivility of our political life. If anything, there is far too much consensus on important issues, particularly where elite and popular opinion diverge, i.e., immigration, gay marriage. From Hilary Clinton to John McCain, our politicians spend far too much time discussing their opponents’ “mean” rhetoric and “dirty tricks.” Similarly, while I think Andrew Sullivan’s criticism of Bob Herbert and the politics of polarization in The French Third Republic are interesting, I also think his own decision to prioritize gay marriage above every other issue, including national security, takes away his own credibility to decry our political culture.

Polarization is not just a question of tone; it is also a question of policy. Radical liberalism, by putting every inherited folkway and institution in its rationalist crucible, does more to raise the stakes than any of the rear guard actions waged by conservatives in defense of the way things have always been done.

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