Twenty-Six Letters

Just Being Helpful

Sat, 18 May 2013 09:54:00 -0500

Let no one say that I am unmoved by a spirit of bipartisan cooperation. President Obama, here’s a suggestion for you: End the Syrian slaughter and discombobulate the critics of activist government in one brilliant stroke by ordering our redoubtable IRS to audit the Assad regime. If it turns out that the Devil of Damascus has been illegally deducting expenses for genocidal mass murder, why, you’ve got him…!

Goodbye To All That?

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:24:00 -0500

If Barack Obama’s presidency could be summed up in a simple mission statement, it would read “restore faith in government.” That was the sine qua non of Operation Hope & Change. Obama’s overall success depended on his ability to persuade the American people that government is both worthy of trust and competent to solve the nation’s problems. But four years and four months on, it’s clear that the President has failed to rehabilitate the image of government. On the contrary, he and his administration have done much to undermine the people’s faith in progressive governance.

The signs were there even before the IRS scandal exploded. Obama’s much-ballyhooed stimulus bill failed to energize the economy. His green energy program failed to generate the promised millions of green jobs. Obamacare proved to be a slow-moving disaster. Far from learning to love America, the Islamic world hates us more than ever. For much of his first term, though, the President was given a pass by the mainstream media. And the American people have been patient with Obama. Despite a lackluster record during his first term, they reelected him in 2012. But virtually from the moment of his second inauguration, things have gone wrong. And now, amid the tumult of a triad of scandals—Benghazi, the IRS, the AP wiretaps—the energy and creativity of the second Obama Administration, such as remained, is leaking away.

In the media recently, there’s been good deal of speculation and chin-pulling over the President’s likely fate. Will this mess sink him, or will he be able to bounce back? In our celebrity-driven culture it’s natural enough to obsess over the fate of a prominent individual. But there’s more at stake in the current crisis than Obama’s approval rating, and some progressives understand this. Above all, the President has personified the idea that government is a force for social and economic good—that it embodies a superior level of benevolence, wisdom and expertise. Barack Obama’s personal failure to govern effectively has undermined that idea—and, not incidentally, has sharpened the conservative/libertarian critique of the government-centered progressive project. Now that’s what I call hope and change.

They Were Only Following Orders

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:35:00 -0500

Well, what do you know? It turns out that those “low-level front-line IRS employeesd who were targeting conservative groups got their marching orders from…Senate Democrats:

Long before the Internal Revenue Service revealed it had improperly targeted conservative 501(c)(4) groups, a group of Democratic senators led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer urged the IRS to do just that.
The IRS’s admission last Friday that it had singled out tea party and other groups for extra audits and delays has raised concerns that President Barack Obama’s administration quietly attempted to stymy opponents through intimidation. But many prominent Democrats — including Montana Sen. Max Baucus, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the New York Times editorial board — had been publicly calling for tighter restrictions on 501(c)(4) groups affiliated with the tea party and conservatives.

Well, you certainly can’t say that the IRS was deaf to the commands of its political masters!

Here's a Thought

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:20:00 -0500

The burgeoning IRS scandal—a glaring instance of the abuse of government power—may well serve to undermine the already shaky case for federally mandated and managed universal background checks for firearms purchases.

Gosnell's Enablers

Fri, 17 May 2013 07:30:00 -0500

The recently concluded Gosnell case—so shocking and disgusting in its exposure of the operation of a bloodstained Philadelphia abortion mill—has whipped the pro-choice crowd into full damage-control mode. Kermit Gosnell is an aberration, they insist. His horrific malpractice is not at all typical of mainstream family planning clinics, such as those run by Planned Parenthood. This may be true—probably is true—but really, we have no way of knowing. For the Gosnell case has brought to light a disquieting fact that should concern all Americans, regardless of their views on abortion: It seems very likely that abortion clinics across the country receive virtually no government oversight.

That was certainly the situation in Pennsylvania. One of the prosecutors in the Gosnell case asked rhetorically why it is that beauty parlors receive more attention from government regulators than do abortion clinics. The answer is that politicians—including former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican who went on to become the first Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush— made a conscious decision not to regulate abortion clinics. After Ridge became governor in 1993, the Pennsylvania Department of Health stopped inspecting the state’s abortion clinics. The reason given for its decision was that inspections could be seen as “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. There are some twenty-two abortion clinics in Pennsylvania and thanks to Ridge, not one of them has been inspected for the past seventeen years—this despite the fact that Pennsylvania has a law on the books banning late-term and partial-birth abortions. Then there’s this, from the grand jury report on the Gosnell case:

“The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and its subsidiary, Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, are in the same neighborhood as Gosnell's office. Pennsylvania state law requires hospitals to report complications from abortions,” noted the report.
"At least three [other] Gosnell patients were brought to Penn facilities for emergency surgery; emergency room personnel said they have treated many others as well,” the report stated. “And at least one additional woman was hospitalized there after Gosnell had begun a flagrantly illegal abortion of a 29-week-old fetus. Yet, other than the one initial report, Penn could find not a single case in which it complied with its legal duty to alert authorities to the danger. Not even when a second woman turned up virtually dead...”

And needless to say, the pro-choice movement itself took scant interest in Gosnell’s gruesome activities:

“NAF [the National Abortion Federation] is an association of abortion providers that upholds the strictest health and legal standards for its members. Gosnell, bizarrely, applied for admission shortly after Karnamaya Mongar's death. Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused. It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected. Of course, she rejected Gosnell's application. She just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen.”

Imagine that. No, really, try to imagine the mindset of a “healthcare professional” who keeps her mouth shut after seeing such things. Is that what it means to champion a woman’s right to choose? It’s fine to proclaim with all the piety one can muster that abortion is a decision that must be left to a woman and her doctor. But what if the doctor is Kermit Gosnell?

Many years ago, critics of the Supreme Court’s notorious Roe v. Wade decision predicted that legalizing unrestricted abortion on demand would trigger a process of moral corruption leading to the devaluation of human life itself. And here we are. The wretched Gosnell is going to prison at least—but Peter Singer is still snug and secure in his tenured Princeton perch.

He Said What?

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:45:00 -0500

What a difference a week makes!

I must say that Triscan (a Newspeak word of my own coinage meaning triple scandal) makes President Obama's condescending little lecture to people fearful of government power, handed down during his May 6 commencement speech at Ohio State University, look like one of the most ill-timed rhetorical sallies in American political history.

Our In-Touch Elected Representatives

Wed, 8 May 2013 13:44:59 -0500

According to Gallup, the two issues of greatest concern to the American public are jobs and the economy (tied at 86%). The two issues of least concern are gun violence (56%) and immigration reform (50%). So naturally our elected representatives are concentrating on…gun violence and immigration reform.

If You Can't Beat Mark Sanford...

Tue, 7 May 2013 20:47:42 -0500

…you may as well call it a day. Despite the baggage of a tawdry sex scandal, the former GOP governor of South Carolina handily defeated a well-financed Democratic challenger to capture the House seat he once occupied. The special election in the Palmetto State’s 1st Congressional District was necessitated by the former incumbent’s appointment to the Senate, replacing Jim DeMint.

The former governor’s candidacy gave many Republicans a case of the vapors. Supposedly disgraced for all time after he was caught cheating on his comely wife Jenny with an Argentinean mistress (to whom he is now engaged), Sanford bounced back to win the GOP nomination for the SC-1 special election in a highly contested primary. Cue the hand-wringing! There were vocal fears that he was about to hand a safe Republican seat over to the Democrats in the person of Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a business executive who also happens to be the sister of TV comedian Stephen Colbert. But in the end it wasn’t even close: Sanford won handily in the heavily Republican district, trouncing Colbert Busch by a 54-46% margin.

Now obviously Mark Sanford wasn't the optimum candidate to contest a special election in a congressional district where a Democratic win would have been seriously embarrassing for the GOP. But he won the primary and general elections fair and square, so there you have it. Will the Democrats now try to make something of his affair and the messy divorce that ensued? It would be tempting. But with rumors swirling that the unfortunately surnamed Anthony Weiner is thinking of running for mayor of New York City, they might want to think twice about that…

Unhappy Warriors on the Left

Tue, 7 May 2013 18:54:58 -0500

There’s one key characteristic of contemporary progressivism that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should: gloomy pessimism. Now this may strike some people as a counterintuitive claim. After all, aren’t progressives constantly touting the near-godlike ability of the public sector to solve all problems, from global warming to the happiness deficit? Well, yes, but the flip side of limitless faith in government appears to be a lack of faith in practically everything else. Insist on the importance of the family and your progressive interlocutor will likely respond with a dirge whose themes include abuse both spousal and child, the slavery of motherhood, the sacrifice of personal fulfillment, etc. Cite the bravery and devotion of the members of the US armed forces and you’ll get a dissertation on PTSD, suicide rates and war crimes. Praise the nation’s Founding Fathers and you’ll be testily reminded that most of them owned slaves. Give Christianity a positive review and you’ll suffer a lecture on the Crusades. Speak approvingly of the US energy boom and you’ll be treated to a tirade on the evils of fracking.

Whether this broad-scale pessimism sends progressives fleeing into the embrace of the Nanny State, or that faith in government crowds out faith in anything else, is a doubtful question. Are progressives pessimists by nature, or is progressivism qua progressivism the death of optimism? Hmmm. What is certain, though, is that pessimism infects progressivism like the bacterium that causes leprosy infects the human body. In the latter case, of course, the resulting disfigurement is physical. The disfigurement that afflicts progressivism is psychological and spiritual, but it still may be studied.

Consider President Barack Obama: Not exactly a happy warrior, is he? Oh, he does mouth the appropriate words when the occasion demands them. But you can tell that when he’s praising the American spirit, etc., his heart isn’t in it. Our community organizer-in-chief only seems to come to life when he’s acting in his capacity as Tribune of the Elites—as he did the other day, admonishing students in a commencement speech at Ohio State University to reject fears of “government tyranny.” Obama thought that he was defending “American democracy”—but his speech was a really just a defense of the unelected, scarcely accountable bureaucrats who are indefatigably at work, contracting the boundaries of American liberty. That it was dressed up with boilerplate rhetoric about “our brave, creative, unique experiment in self-rule” could not conceal its fundamental pessimism. If there are problems, only government can fix them. That’s Obama’s message to America—and the progressive credo.

It may be argued in rebuttal that conservatism also take a pessimistic view of things. I don’t agree that it does. Conservatism is based, rather, on a tragic view of life: that human nature is flawed, that many problems can never be solved but only ameliorated, that Utopia indeed means nowhere. And perhaps that’s the difference: Progressivism does seek Utopia and the fact that it remains out of reach breeds the cynical pessimism that afflicts our president with his habitual sour face.

Fearing an Epic Fail

Tue, 7 May 2013 06:42:54 -0500

If you look up “train wreck” in your Roget’s, you won’t find “Obamacare” listed as a synonym. Maybe it should be, though.

Republicans have been predicting disaster since the thing was passed, but their objections were given the brush-off by the Obama Administration, Democrats and the mainstream media. When the American people began to experience the wonders of Obamacare, they insisted, all would be well.

But now, with the midterm elections approaching fast, congressional Democrats—who unlike the President and the MSM must face the voters—are getting nervous. The centerpiece of Obamacare, the state insurance exchange system, is due for introduction in 2014, and there are increasing fears that the rollout will be a fiasco. And though the Administration professes to be unworried, an odor of flop sweat hangs in the air. The White House has told congressional Democrats that it has a “communications strategy” for the rollout, suggesting that the President and his people think they have only a public relations problem. But the administrative hurdles to a smooth implementation of Obamacare are high, and there’s reason to think that the law’s vast complexities will make it unworkable. What will happen, for example, if the Administration’s “communications strategy” fails to persuade young people to sign up for insurance in the large numbers necessary to balance Obamacare’s books? No one really knows.

Some pundits have chided Republicans for obstructionism: The GOP should just get with the program, they whine. But politically it would make little sense for Republicans, who’ve opposed Obamacare almost unanimously from the start, to carry the President’s water for him now. Let the chips fall where they may and then, perhaps, the GOP will find itself well position to say “Told you so” in 2014.