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Twenty-Six Letters
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Tone Deaf in DC
Topic: Liberal Fascism

One of the most amusing aspects of the Obama Administration is its almost daily refutation of the proposition that after the horrific Bush years, "the grownups are in charge." From the politically disastrous "stimulus" bill to the  counterproductive war with Fox News, Team Obama shows that, like the Bourbons, it has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Now, just days after the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, Obama's dim-bulb attorney general, the inimitable Eric Holder, has announced that he intends to try five Islamofascist 9/11 conspirators in a New York City civilian courtroom!

This decision is stupid on so many levels of politics and policy that I'm still mentally listing them. On the political front, Bill Kristol explain why he thinks that Holder's decision will spell trouble for congressional Democrats. One wonders how many of them will be willing to tamely swallow this specimen of Holder's tone-deaf ideological fanaticism. 


Posted by tmg110 at 8:27 AM CST
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Smearing the Troops
Topic: The Media

Remember those stories from 2003-04, blaming US troops for desecrating Iraq's cultural heritage? We were told that our soldiers stood by idly while the Iraqi National Museum was trashed by looters. We were told that precious archaeological sites, including that of ancient Babylon, were shamefully neglected. And so on.

Now we learn that the tale of Iraq's lost archaeological heritage was mostly media hype. The museum, for instance, recently reopened with almost all of it fabled treasures on display. Turns out that the actual pillaging occurred during the reign of Saddam Hussein, and that most of the items on public display at the time of the US-led invasion were fakes. The priceless originals were stored in a vault, untouched by looters.

The mainstream media uncritically accepted alarmist reports of pillage and neglect by people with an obvious political interest in smearing US troops. this is just one more example of the MSM's reflexive impulse to smear the US armed forces at every opportunity. Thanks, guys.


Posted by tmg110 at 7:55 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, 14 November 2009 8:37 AM CST
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Friday, 13 November 2009
Why I'm a Conservative
Topic: Must Read

In 1964 I was too young to vote, but I rooted for LBJ. In 1968, I was still too young to vote (the 26th Amendment wasn't ratified until 1971), but I supported Hubert Horatio Humphrey. In 1972 I cast my first presidential ballot—for Richard M. Nixon. I used to think it was military service and Vietnam that changed my political orientation.  But now, having read Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein, I have a much better grasp of the broad historical forces that pushed me, a typical Irish Catholic kid from Massachusetts, out of the Democratic Party.

In Perlstein's telling, the unmaking of America's liberal consensus—for that is the subject of his book—was also the making of modern conservatism. He shows how Barry Goldwater's 1964 run for the presidency, on the surface a disaster for the Republican Party and the conservative cause, actually laid the groundwork for a conservative ascendancy that endures to this day. (If this seems a dubious assertion after 2008, check out the current condition of the Obama Administration.) Among other things, 1964 launched Ronald Reagan on a political trajectory that landed him in the California governorship and led ultimately to the White House.

Perlstein's story is too complex to summarize here. It should be noted, however, that it is in some respects an unlovely story. LBJ's ruthlessness, duplicity and repulsive personality are all well on display. Conservatism's connections with anti-communist paranoia (e.g. the John Birch Society) and racism (e.g. George Wallace) are laid out in painful detail. Richard Milhouse Nixon plays a prominent role—it was in 1964 that he set the stage for his successful 1968 campaign. In the person of Nelson Rockefeller, Perlstein delineates the demise of liberal Republicanism. Barry Goldwater himself comes off comparatively well: a rotten candidate, to be sure, but an honorable man. And those are just a few of the names in Perlstein's extensive cast of characters.

If you're at all interested in American political history, get this book: Before the Storm is a must read.


Posted by tmg110 at 7:20 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, 14 November 2009 7:52 AM CST
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The Senate May Be Hazardous to Health Care "Reform"
Topic: Decline of the West

Here are two sentences that, if accurate, spell disaster for the Democrats' grand plan to nationalize the US health care system:

Just talked to a very insightful Capitol Hill Watcher who doesn’t think Harry Reid has the votes in the Senate to pass anything resembling comprehensive healthcare reform. You can count out Lieberman, Landrieu, Nelson and maybe even Bayh.

This from James Pethokoukis, blogging on the Reuters website. All I can say is that I hope he's right. Compared with the malign effects of health care "reform," the economic damage done so far by the Obama Administration would look like a series of rounding errors.


Posted by tmg110 at 6:49 AM CST
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Anita Hits the Bricks
Topic: Liberal Fascism

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, pointperson of the Obama Administration's jihad against Fox News, is leaving her post at the end of the month.

Now I'm sure that her abrupt departure has nothing whatever to do with the fact that the White House's war on Fox made Obama and his people look thin-skinned, petty and inept, nor  that the principal effect of their attacks was to boost the network's ratings. Not, I am sure does it have a thing to do that one of Dunn's role models is the late Chairman Mao, executioner of some 70 million Chinese. No this is all part of the Obama Administration's master plan to…to…um…oh, never mind!


Posted by tmg110 at 6:35 AM CST
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Thursday, 12 November 2009
2010 Outlook
Topic: Decline of the West

It's hard to believe that the 2010 midterm elections are now visible on the political horizon, but there you are. There is a tide in the affairs of the res publica. In 2006-08 it swept the Democrats into power. In 2010, however, the Dems may find that the tide has turned.

Six months ago it would have taken a bold prognosticator indeed to suggest that the fortunes of the GOP would revive as swiftly as they have. Yet thanks to the majority party's hubris and ineptitude, that's precisely what has happened. The Obama Administration and the Democratic congressional majority are shedding credibility and support day by day. Having become better acquainted with Obama, many voters have decided he's not at all what they bargained for. They're worried about the economy and they don't think that his party's left-liberal agenda will effectively address the issues that they care really care about.

It has now become inevitable, I think, that the Democrats will suffer significant losses in the 2010 election. Whether this will cost them control of the House remains an open question—but what once seemed unthinkable has now become a distinct possibility. And Republicans have one make to thank for their good fortune. It's all about the O


Posted by tmg110 at 7:18 AM CST
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Order. . .Counterorder. . .Disorder
Topic: Decline of the West

Read carefully between the lines of this AP story, and you will discern the faint outline of the coming American defeat in Afghanistan.

It grieves me to say this, but defeat seems inevitable, given Barack Obama's inability to make a decision. He has, it appears, rejected all options on the table, presumably because none of them told him what he wanted to hear, i.e. that there's an easy way out of the war. Of course it would be just swell if we could stabilize the Afghan government, defeat the Taliban and create conditions for an orderly US withdrawal without making a major commitment or taking risks. But war doesn't work like that—a fact that, as President Obama slowly processes it, seems to be scaring him half to death.

In a way I can sympathize with him. The pressure on any president faced with such life-or-death decisions is excruciating. But that's what we pay presidents to do—make decisions. And that seems to be the very last thing that Obama wants to do. For a decision, once made, represents a commitment. If the first year of Obama's presidency has demonstrated anything, it's that he's not very good at commitment.

General McChrystal's proposed counterinsurgency strategy is of course a gamble. Everything in war is a gamble. Instead of accepting the immutable reality, Obama is demanding guarantees. That's bad news for the country—and terrible news for the American troops who will be asked to risk their lives for…what? Barack Obama's standing with MoveOn.org?


Posted by tmg110 at 6:52 AM CST
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Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Some Kind of Victory
Topic: Liberal Fascism

The elephantine legislative amalgam known as PelosiCare lumbered across the House finish line last weekend with a couple of votes to spare. Now people are trying to figure out just what it is: a health care bill? a tax bill? an abortion bill? an immigration bill? a bureaucrat full employment bill? Who can say? One thing's for sure, though—it's not a Democrats-get-reelected bill.

Had on the heels of PelosiCare's passage comes the news that in the latest Rasmussen Generic Congressional Ballot, the Republican Party has jumped to a six-point lead. Uh-oh…

So as Nancy celebrates her victory, permit me to summon forth the memory of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, he whose sanguinary battlefield victories over the Roman Republic moved him to remark that "A few more victories like this and we are undone."


Posted by tmg110 at 7:07 AM CST
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Death by Diversity
Topic: Decline of the West

 

There was a time when Americans—from presidents to ordinary private citizens—had no problem recognizing the face of evil. The abolition movement didn’t treat slavery as a mental disorder requiring therapy. The people of this country didn’t view National Socialism as multicultural quirk of German history. It was the aroused conscience of the nation that finally put an end to legally sanctioned racial segregation. But somewhere along the way, that kind of moral clarity, the ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, seems to have faded out of our public culture.

 

You see evidence of this in small things and big ones. A college student wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt. Casual toleration of marital infidelity. Easy acceptance of a politician’s lies. And just recently, a frightening inability to perceive that Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan is an Islamist radical who carried out a calculated act of terror.

 

The bodies had hardly been bagged before media pundits and self-nominated experts like Dr. Phil betrayed their blindness to reality. Whatever could have driven this Army officer to do such a terrible thing? Doubtless he was under a good deal of post-traumatic stress. Perhaps he felt picked upon due to his religion—which, the pundits hastened to add, could not possibly have had a single thing to do with his murderous rampage. Islamofascism? Terrorism? Perish the thought!

 

As those of us who are willing to look at the facts well know, Nidal Malik Hasan is indeed a radical Islamist. He made no particular secret of it, either. Yet despite his string of incendiary statements and his terrorist connections, neither the Army nor the FBI felt that his views and activities merited concern. Indeed, the Army even promoted the man. A string of adverse, career-killer officer evaluation reports proved no barrier to Hasan’s steady progress through the commissioned ranks. People just preferred not to recognize him for what he was.

 

How could this be so? Though disheartening, it was also enlightening to watch the Chief of Staff of the United States Army regurgitate the standard talking points of our therapeutic culture. Terrible as the Fort Hood massacre had been, he opined, it would be worse if the Army’s “diversity” suffered. I thought at that moment that the three dozen wounded, the thirteen dead and all their families and loved ones would gladly trade some Army diversity for a world in which Hasan had been booted from the ranks before he ever had a chance to launch his one-Muslim jihad. But that could never have happened, for Hasan represented to the leadership of the Army just that diversity so dear to General Casey’s heart. He was a Muslim officer—a mental-health professional, no less!—and they were determined to hang onto him at all costs. You can call this a commitment to diversity if you like. I call it an example of intellectual dishonesty combined with moral idiocy that culminated in an orgy of death and terror.

 

Barack Obama went to Fort Hood yesterday to address the troops, and many of his words were well chosen. But for all his eloquence, the President seemed to suffer from a speech impediment. He could not pronounce the relevant words: terrorist, Islamist radical, Muslim fanatic. Instead he said: “It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know—no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor.”

 

I agree with the last part of that. No just and loving God spoke to Nidal Malik Hasan. But the rest is nonsense on stilts. For those with eyes to see, ears to hear and the memory of history, Hasan’s actions are all too comprehensible. We’ve seen his kind before. They shot and gassed countless Jews in German-occupied Poland, Ukraine and Russia. They operated Stalin’s executions cellars and guarded his Gulag. For the most part they were ordinary men who in their private lives would never have dreamed of committing rape, torture or murder. But their faith—in the will of the Führer, in the promise of socialism’s radiant future—was a real and living force for evil.

 

More recently men such as these have been busily at work in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Afghanistan, Iraq, New York City, Madrid, London—Fort Hood, Texas. The President would have done well yesterday to describe for the world the true nature of the murderous ideology that possessed the soul of Nidal Malik Hasan. Instead, he employed weasel words—presumably not to offend the world’s Muslims. But if Nidal Malik Hasan’s actions do not greatly offend mainstream Islam—and it appears that they don’t, not really—then the President’s sensitivity is badly misplaced. His circumlocutions are futile. His platitudes are received by our enemies as the whine of a coward, and they rejoice at his timid refusal to pronounce their name.

 

Dostoevsky, I think, once remarked that every great evil begins with a lie. First we lie to others then we lie to ourselves, and finally we become blind to the approach of evil. That’s an apt summation of the malady that fogs the minds of so many Americans. That’s why they didn’t see Nidal Malik Hasan coming. That’s why they still can’t recognize him for what he is.


Posted by tmg110 at 6:41 AM CST
Updated: Thursday, 12 November 2009 7:22 PM CST
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Tuesday, 10 November 2009
He Seconds the Motion
Topic: Decline of the West

Ralph Peters shares my skepticism about President Obama's likely response to the Fort Hood massacre:

Just as we'd expect the Army to get rid of a disruptive white supremacist, we need to cashier anyone who espouses violent Islamist extremism -- as Maj. Hasan did, again and again.

We won't. Because Islamist terrorism doesn't exist. Just ignore the dead and ask our president.

Ouch! Now that's a rhetorical slap upside the head!


Posted by tmg110 at 8:08 AM CST
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