The Seemless Drift to Gomorrah

Sometimes, it seems as if the Left and Right agree on much more than their adherents perceive, the difference being mainly semantic... and concerning whether the sociological item on the table is positive or negative. Of course, in most contexts, that either/or judgment is the core determinant of whether we would characterize two parties as "in agreement," but it would surely serve the end of clarity if we could develop a social vocabulary that enabled us to trace agreement on cause and consequence even when we disagree vehemently on the desirability of the latter.

Take the thread that can be made to unravel beginning with Megan Andelloux's letter of objection to the Donna Hughes op-ed that I mentioned the other day:

Let me introduce myself: I’m the [sexologist and] nationally certified sex-educator and derogatorily labeled “tattooed lady” mentioned by Donna Hughes in her June 24 opinion piece. It seems that the professor of women’s studies at the University of Rhode Island was so put off by my appearance that she called into question my credentials. Putting quotation marks around my profession was insulting. And yes, I am a contributor to the sex-workers magazine $pread. Is it so shocking that sex workers can read?

Here's where we pause for a moment either to marvel that we're being asked to take seriously a magazine called $pread or to huff at the judgmentalism of those who don't appreciate the campy wordplay appropriate to a quirky profession. My reaction was the former, of course, and I'm further inclined to propose sympathy with academics who can't resist putting quotation marks around a line of work that entails publication in such a "periodical."

Still, we'd do better all around by practicing a healthy humor over undo seriousness concerning titles. Odd that I, arch conservative, should be the one thus to chastise, but as far as I'm concerned, quotations are implied around any and every title and credential; we print the punctuation merely as an expression of personal opinion about a particular one. Being a "professional" ultimately indicates little more than the ability to collect money for a particular service. Credentials and degrees mean specifically that hoops have been jumped, and the fact that they are available means primarily that somebody has found profit in offering them.

This is not to say that there isn't value to credentials and degrees; if a person is in the market for a sexologist (or, for that matter, an astrologer), it would be prudent to seek one who is recognized by the structural consensus of the field. It is also not to say that degree programs and certifications of longer pedigree aren't subject to the same yardstick; they profit mainly from better phrasing and a more sophisticated marketing campaign, and I'm as apt to pfft bubbles into my milk over any given university's catalog of degree offerings as over certain documentation available exclusively online.

Let it be acknowledged, though, that those of a radical bent have strong motivation to assert the legitimacy, even banality, of their officialnesses — initially because they don't have a track record of respectability, but also because their object (whether conscious or instinctual) is the incremental implementation of a culture toward which a majority of their countrymen would decline to set sail were it in the travelogue. The radical, progressive agenda proclaims the mildness of each turn of the rudder, suggesting that circumstances just favor the port to the immediate west. When the evening tides change the weather, the radicals cajole that a nearby island promises a safer harbor, and they announce their ever-foreseeable destination only after they've won control of the helm at midnight.

Sexology elides quickly to $pread, which explicitly validates prostitution, which is lashed to a culture of drugs, perversion, and abuse. The difficulty in communication is that the folks who inhabit points along that progression see nothing wrong with it and, where malevolent symptoms are undeniable, will blame stigma and society's blurred vision of the "real" problems beneath. To outsiders inspecting the strange world, its advocates raise people, like Andelloux, who appear admirably well adjusted except for the fetishes and kinks (although they'd argue against my "except").

Megan's Web site, for example, is conspicuously harmless, exuding softness. She doesn't appear dangerous, nor does she appear unhappy. See, naught can be wrong with a life led smiling. Personal unhappiness, however, is not the only — not even the most important — consequence of committing one's self to her worldview. That actuality comes into view with Ms. Andelloux's list of professional memberships, which includes both NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Once again, some will applaud that association, but we others see in it the most dire consequence of sexual "liberation."

The most dire in a parade of consequences. There's a whole lot of societal deconstruction to be observed in the life of this girl next door:

Derek Andelloux is an ex-football player, and he is built like one. He is blonde and blue-eyed with high cheekbones, and, like all blondes, Megan says, he smells like candy. He is husky, and Dutch-looking, and enjoys chopping wood. And after a few years of dating, he wanted to propose to Megan.

She gave him a hundred different reasons why marriage was antiquated and sexist. She pointed out that her gay friends couldn't get married. She didn't want to lose her identity, to be introduced as Derek's wife, to be seen as a ball and chain instead of a sexual being. But she did want to spend the rest of her life with Derek.

The couple agreed to have a commitment ceremony instead, and after exchanging rings in front of 135 friends and relatives in September 2004, they merged their last names — he went from being Derek Mailloux to Derek Andelloux, and she added the French suffix to the first two syllables of "Anderson."

The life of this particular sexologist strives for sterility and is scornful of the institution by which Western society has so successfully managed relationships in which intended sterility is notoriously difficult to achieve. Conveniently, her "life partner's" Daily Kos diary describes him as a "future abortion provider."

Some will decry it as inflammatory to observe the fortuity of their relationship: Her life's work is to encourage a cast of mind with consequent behavior that tends to result in the creation of inconvenient human life, and his will be the termination of that life. I'd describe that as a cross-marketing package designed in Hell. They, likely not believing in Hell, would see their ideologies as mutually — and benignly — reinforcing and as reflective of their complementary affinities. Given her declared disinterest in becoming a parent, would it be offensive of me to wonder whether the couple mightn't find intimacy in the shared experience of eliminating their own accidental offspring? If so, why? It's an honest question.

With this image of suburban domesticity in a world in which prostitution is just another trade, cultural corruption is only mildly visible on the surface but applies its inevitably destructive subversion. It puts a whimsical, pastel face on a set of cannibalizing priorities. The legions of less-advantaged souls who cannot afford the Andellouxs' packaging will suffer tangible harm by the destruction of a culture from which they've benefited hugely, but in which radicals see only obstacles to the fulfillment of their desires.

Now consider Megan's behavior with her extended family:

Though Andelloux does not plan on having children of her own, she loves the sassiness and angst of teenagers. She often picks her niece Becky up in a town outside of Worcester, Massachusetts, and takes her out to dinner or shopping for shoes. Although Becky's parents, Andelloux's sister Amy and her husband Michael Zakarian, don't approve of her attempts to educate their children, Andelloux finds ways to spend time with her niece and her nephew, Tommy.

Would it be judgmental to characterize the subversion of others' attempts to guide their own children as the polar opposite of respect? And if respect for differences and tolerance for the social enclaves that others build for themselves — most concretely, under their own roofs — is not the hallmark of a social movement that lists the Kink-Aware Professionals group alongside the ACLU, doesn't the cry of "live and let live" take on a vicious insincerity?

Would it be hyperbolic of me to suggest that such as these are blithe to their deconstruction of our society? It could not be, because rephrasing the suggestion in sunnier terms, they'd likely agree.

The Liberal's Tempered Perspective

The first thing to note about Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne's after-dinner speech at the Portsmouth Institute's conference on William F. Buckley's conservatism is his mention of something that struck me for the duration of the event: namely, that religious life does not preclude real life, much less intellectual life. Stream, download (52 sec). Experience with the monastery and admiration for the monks, Dionne said, saved him "from a sometimes popular and always foolish prejudice against men and women of faith."

That perspective brings into relief the difficulty of Dionne's task at the conference, as the lone liberal speaker in the program as well as an alumnus of the school, a personal friend to many in the audience, and an ideological dissenter handed a microphone at what was, after all, a multiday tribute to WFB. Still, I would have preferred his going a good bit further in challenging his audience, because the debate that he might have sparked would have exposed a more comprehensive picture of what Buckley actually accomplished.

Dionne described, for example, what he takes to be "the many contradictions of contemporary conservatism," and the messiness and continual threat of collapse that such composition implies: stream, download (47 sec). Missed in his convenient observation (for a liberal) is, first, that reality itself is messy and seemingly self-contradictory and, second, that Western civilization itself is more a brilliantly contrived pile of loose stones than a solid monolith. He speaks of conservative fusionism as an idea that "never fully cohered" without apparently seeing that an ideology that would accurately address the world as it stands must necessarily involve an organic process of adjusting to infinite semblances of incoherence in the universe and human nature.

Of a piece is Dionne's characterization of Buckley's conservative counterculturalism as a paradox: stream, download (46 sec). Dionne describes Buckley's work as a reaction to the stultifying conformity of the '50s, but he seems not to understand that the objection to "middle of the road qua middle of the road" is that making moderation a goal is not only incoherent, but points to emptiness.

WFB's accomplishment, in this regard, is that he manifested the age's aesthetic preference for rebels but pointed it toward an intellectual structure concerned, at its soul, with a higher order, compared with the deliberate (and selectively beneficial) chaos underlying the prescriptions of radicals.

Left Moves Right Past Truth to Slander

Somehow the Washington Post, via the mouth of U.S. News and World Report's Alex Kingsbury manages to pull pro-lifers and free-marketers under the same umbrella as Islamic radicals as a means of retroactively absolving Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano of the need for embarrassment over her department's politically motivated report warning of pending right-wing terrorism:

In the past two weeks, the country has seen the bombing of a Starbucks coffee shop in New York City, the arrest of four men for allegedly plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down planes, the shooting of two soldiers at an Army recruitment center in Arkansas, the assassination of a doctor inside a Kansas church, and the shooting at the Holocaust Museum.... Although these are not all cases of right-wing extremism, each is an example of domestic terrorism.

That's right. A report that warned that newly returned veterans might be a stalking ground for recruitment by conservative villains is said to be vindicated in part by the murder of a military recruiter by a jihadi. Could a notion be more worthy of scorn?

Andy McCarthy does a fine job with the response that is unfortunately necessary in the face of such rhetoric. Paring the list of supposed evidence down to the fifty-something killer of an abortionist and the octogenarian white supremacist who attacked the Holocaust Museum, McCarthy explains:

The DHS report was noxious because it smeared conservatives as bigots and claimed, in the absence of any evidence that "rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits" — including from returning military veterans — in preparation for a spate of terrorism. (Who's the new recruit? The 88-year-old Nazi?) It insinuated that traditional conservative policy positions (pro-federalism, pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, anti-illegal-immigration) were drivers of extremism. And it contended — in contravention of standard law-enforcement guidelines and federal law — that federal and state agencies should undertake pro-active investigations on the basis of constitutionally protected beliefs and activities.

Nothing Like Inactivism

Thomas Sowell puts his finger on something that many conservatives see as a frustrating and dangerous exercise in fantasy:

We have, for example, been doing nothing to stop Iran from getting nuclear bombs, but it has been elaborate, multifaceted, and complexly nuanced nothing.

Had there been no United Nations, it would have been obvious to all and sundry that we were doing nothing — and that could have had dire political consequences at election time.

However, thanks to the United Nations, there is a place where political leaders can go to do nothing, with a flurry of highly visible activity — and the media will cover it in detail, with a straight face, so that people will think that something is actually being done.

There may be televised statements and counter-statements — passionate debate among people wearing exotic apparel from different nations, all in an impressive, photogenic setting. U.N. resolutions may be voted upon and published to the world. It can be some of the best nothing that money can buy.

On first look, Sowell's criticism of this nothingness would seem to conflict with the "inactivism" championed by Jonah Goldberg, but it doesn't:

These readers also note that I am in favor of an activist foreign policy when it comes to Iraq — and a few other places as well — and they accuse me of hypocrisy. It's a fair point as far as it goes in that I've never made a distinction between foreign and domestic policy when it comes to inactivism. But there is an important distinction here. In a decent, democratic, society individuals and associations of individuals can be trusted to regulate themselves and each other with minimal governmental — especially minimal federal — interference. Businesses solve their own problems without Washington, property owners protect their own property, communities devise ways to protect their citizens. Etc.

What inactivism comes down to is not taking action via government, because other social strata will take action and are better qualified to identify what action to take. On the international scene, however, dealing with other nations is explicitly the role of government.

To some degree, those on the other side of the aisle take the reverse approach: Taking action via government because they do not wish to let those other strata do what they do. But I've little doubt that they'd take the same approach to international affairs if given the chance. The difference is that liberals like to manipulate those who try to play by the rules, and the intractable rule-breakers who therefore get a pass are more prominent at the nation-state level.

Battles over Language

It's difficult not to see a deliberate stratagem behind the left's reaction to the "S" word, as Jonah Goldberg describes in USA Today:

Washington Post columnists Jim Hoagland (a centrist), E.J. Dionne (a liberal) and Harold Meyerson (very, very liberal) have all suggested that Obama intentionally or otherwise is putting us on the path to "social democracy." Left-wing blogger and Democratic activist Matthew Yglesias last fall hoped that the financial crisis offered a "real opportunity" for "massive socialism." Polling done by Rasmussen — and touted by Meyerson — shows that while Republicans favor "capitalism" over "socialism" by 11 to 1, Democrats favor capitalism by a mere 39% to 30%. So, again: Is it really crazy to think that there is a constituency for some flavor of socialism in the Democratic Party?

When the question is aimed at them like an accusation, liberals roll their eyes at such "paranoia." They say Obama is merely reviving "New Deal economics" to "save" or "reform" capitalism. But liberals themselves have long seen this approach as the best way to incrementally bring about a European-style, social democratic welfare state. As Arthur Schlesinger Jr. (Robert's father) wrote in 1947, "There seems no inherent obstacle to the gradual advance of socialism in the United States through a series of New Deals."

The label of "socialist" doesn't play well across the United States, so as the administration inches toward applicable policies, the interference machine will kick into gear. I say call it what you will: Pravda uses "Marxism"; Golberg suggests "corporatism" (a marker of fascism). We could go with "statism," or perhaps we should coin "Obamaism" (although that sounds more like a trademark pattern of speech).

Just as with "liberalism," "Leftism," "progressivism," and so on, the stink of the concept will come through whatever perfumed linguistics are applied.

How the Moderate Enables the Liberal

David Brooks's recent column on judicial empathy is a wonderful example of the method by which moderates enable liberals. He begins with a strawman that in no way bears scrutiny:

The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood. It's based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that in rendering decisions, disembodied, objective judges are able to put aside emotion and unruly passion and issue opinions on the basis of pure reason.

Oddly, his very next sentence is, "Most people know this is untrue." If that's the case, perhaps Mr. Brooks should reconsider the accuracy of declaring the entire system's "basis." At the very least, some red flags ought to go up: It isn't accurate as a statement of our nation's founding, or else the Founders wouldn't have bothered interweaving the judiciary with the system of checks and balances. It isn't accurate as a statement about complaints against "judicial activism," which is made comprehensible by the fact that those who do the complaining don't promote the development of a system (one can imagine software) that takes the judgment out of judging.

By packing straw within reasonable-man's clothing, however, Brooks attempts to smuggle through an issue about which there would be some argument: that ours is a "nation of laws." His mechanism, here, is to present a definition of that phrase and to declare it false, while the substantive debate is over what the phrase means. I'd suggest the definition that our laws — not our personal histories, pedigrees, or credentials — set up the boundaries within which we should, as is unavoidable, rely on our human intellectual messiness. For his part, Brooks indulges in the falsehood that such plausible and necessary ideals are not ideals, but strict rules that may easily be proven to be impossible.

Thus, when he puts forward a perfectly banal observation about the process of decision making, he gives it the embellishing air of deconstructing a philosophical pillar of Truth (which, by the way, "most people know is untrue.")

The decision-making process gets even murkier once the judge has absorbed the disparate facts of a case. When noodling over some issue — whether it's a legal case, an essay, a math problem or a marketing strategy — people go foraging about for a unifying solution. This is not a hyper-rational, orderly process of the sort a computer might undertake. It's a meandering, largely unconscious process of trial and error.

The mind tries on different solutions to see if they fit. Ideas and insights bubble up from some hidden layer of intuitions and heuristics. Sometimes you feel yourself getting closer to a conclusion, and sometimes you feel yourself getting farther away. The emotions serve as guidance signals, like from a GPS, as you feel your way toward a solution.

Then — often while you're in the shower or after a night's sleep — the answer comes to you. You experience a fantastic rush of pleasure that feels like a million tiny magnets suddenly clicking into alignment.

Notice the transition of Brooks's subject from "the judge" to "you." He's shooting for a moment of recognition in the reader — an "oh yeah, I've felt that." At the other end of the transition, the author slips in what is likely subconscious legerdemain: "The crucial question in evaluating a potential Supreme Court justice, therefore, is not whether she relies on empathy or emotion, but how she does so." He's made us sympathetic to the process and now applies it to his specific topic so as to slip right past the significance of evidence that's already on the table, such as Sonia Sotomayor's view of legal indefiniteness, her use of the language of identity politics, and President Obama's view that "one of the roles of the courts is to protect people who don't have a voice."

Brooks's column, in short, skirts the relevant questions. He states that "Sotomayor will be a good justice if she can empathize with the many types of people and actions involved in a case," but he doesn't engage in the debate over whether that looks likely to be the case. He restates the "crucial question" in such a way as to brush aside previous attempts at an answer.He ends the piece by hearkening back to wise conservatives of yore, with the implication being that those participating in the particular current debate on the potential Supreme Court justice are drifting from those roots.

It makes a cartoon of conservatives to presuppose that we don't understand the limits of our humanity. If anything, conservatives focus on them and, as Brooks ought to know, construct our philosophies of governance around acknowledging them. In the case of the judiciary, we raise up the principle of objectivity — the rule of law — and encourage a system whereby the sides nominate judges who will strive to achieve that ideal, with some missing the mark to the left and some missing it to the right.

In the hands of "moderates," such strategies skew by virtue of their presentation. Aesthetically, modern "centrists" lean toward liberalism and so will tend to construct their obvious, nice-sounding abstractions in such a way as to elide the left's extremism while making the right's mainstream seem dogged and extreme. The end result is an expression of the truism that perfect balance and compromise is not realistic, which ultimately cedes to the liberal argument that factors outside of our shared system — be it legal, political, or social — ought to predominate.

Grassroots Against the Socialist Revolution

Former CIA official Herbert Meyer has an excellent article about the Left's strategy and methods for radically transforming the United States of America, touching on some broad themes in current events:

At the core of democracy is the rule of law, and we have already lost it. The liberals lecture us incessantly that everything is "relative," but that's not true; some things are absolutes. You cannot claim to be faithful to your spouse because you never cheat on her -- except when you're in London on business. And you cannot claim to have the rule of law if the government can set aside the rule of law when it decides that "special circumstances" have arisen that warrant illegality. When the President and his aides handed ownership of Chrysler Corp. to the United Auto Workers union, they tried to avoid sending that beleaguered company into bankruptcy by muscling its bondholders into accepting less money for their assets than the law entitled them to collect. These contracts, and the law under which they were signed, were mere obstacles to a thuggish President bent on paying off his political supporters.

It's going to get much worse, fast. President Obama has told us time and again that among his criteria for choosing Federal judges will be "empathy." Empathy is a wonderful quality in any human being, but a judge's job is to rule according to the law. Once our courts are presided over by judges who will reach verdicts based on how they feel about an issue -- such as abortion or the right of citizens to bear arms -- the law will be whatever the judges wish it to be; the rule of law will become an empty phrase rather than the architecture of our civilization.

We have lost our free-market economy as quickly as we have lost the rule of law. Money is to an economy what blood is to a body; life and death resides within the organ that controls its flow. The government already owns our country's leading banks, which means the government now controls our economy. (And in all fairness to President Obama, it was the Bush administration that started us down this ghastly road.) One indicator of the Obama administration's real objective: When some banks that had taken federal money attempted to repay their loans, the Treasury Department refused to accept repayment and step aside. This shows the government's goal isn't to prop up the banks, but rather to control them.

Here, too, things are going to get much worse, fast. The government now owns General Motors Corp., is reaching for control of insurance companies, and has launched plans to take over our country's healthcare industry. It even wants authority to set the salaries of executives in industries that, at least for now, aren't being subsidized or underwritten by the government.

Put all this together, and what we have in our country today isn't a democracy and it isn't a free-market economy. Reader, what we have now is a revolution.

And his solution should resonated especially well among Rhode Islanders:

We need to launch a counter-offensive, so to speak, and the place to start is at the local level. Working with our county and state political parties when we can -- or working around them when we must -- our objective will be to elect as many people as we can to public office who understand what a democracy is and how the free market works. This will include city council members, county commissioners, school board members, judges, sheriffs and even members of the local parks commission. With the strength and political momentum their elections will provide, we can surge to the state level and then -- before it's too late -- take back the power in Washington DC.

Although centralization of resources and legislation has been a creeping corrosive for quite some time, power is still pretty widely distributed in the American system of governance. Most of us do not wish to wield even local power, but as Meyer goes on to suggest, the alternative to engaging with our intact civic system will be much more burdensome — perhaps even "horrific."

Overheard on the Jobsite

Multi-job-site days always disrupt my posting routine, but I was rewarded with an encouraging exchange at my second stop. Two glass guys from the cape were installing a shower door as I put trim around the large vanity mirror. When they broke out the hammer drill to put screw anchors in the marble around the shower:

Me:You guys sure are loud.
Glass guy 1: Hey, you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet.
Me: Are you communists, too?
Glass guy 2:No, but we're all socialists now, apparently. You gotta spread the wealth around.
Me: Change you can believe in, because you've seen it before.
Glass guy 1: Hey, did you hear what the interest payments are going to be on all this borrowing?...
Glass guy 1: And you know how much that photo shoot from the plane in New York cost? ...

I work among non-union blue collar guys, of course, but it's still surprising (and pleasant!) to have such conversations.

I had my MP3 player on shuffle. If only it had happened to play that children's choir Obama campaign song...

Denouncing Nuts... of Two Kinds

For the record, I have no trouble denouncing these people — a denunciation in which I include both the subject of the linked post and those who associate with its poster. By suggesting that I might "think like" the "God hates fags" lunatics, Crowley illustrates his profound lack of reading comprehension skills and vicious disregard for the truth.

I don't believe that God hates, period, and I have a deep sympathy for homosexuals who wish to live as closely to heretofore heterosexual norms as possible. I've written before that I can envision a route to inclusion of their relationships in the institution of marriage in the long term and have lamented that the zeitgeist and subculture of the same-sex marriage movement make that possibility virtually nil.

Fringe groups like the Westboro Baptist Church and Phelps family get their theology so wrong as to further the cause of evil in the world, both by their own offensive acts and the degree to which they justify the errors of those whom they oppose.

Crowley's Strategy: Repeat the Lie

I remain reluctant to relinquish the innocence that leads to my being surprised that such people as Pat Crowley exist outside of Charles Dickens novels and the bureaucracies of totalitarian madhouse societies.

Last April, I informed readers of the Providence Journal opinion pages that, "according to tax returns filed in 2005 and 2006 (based on income from 2004 and 2005), Rhode Island lost, on a net basis, 8,296 taxpayers, with an aggregate adjusted gross income totaling $485 million, over those two years (IRS migration data)." The statement derived from some research that I'd posted here in February, and on which I later expanded here and here.

One recent evening, somebody working with the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce emailed me to inquire after my source, which I provided, and subsequently forwarded to me an "E-Brief" conveying the data (PDF). RI Representative David Segal (D., Providence, East Providence) got wind of the release and posted about it on RI Future.

Then Crowley got in the game, teasing a post in which he would get to the bottom of the Chamber's claim. Wrote Pat: "Needless to say, this has made the policy wonk in me very excited. Why? A number is verifiable. Or at least it should be." In the comments, Tom Sgouros chipped in to correctly identify the data source (IRS migration) and to concede, at least, that "there's no doubt that it's troubling information."

When Pat finally put the post up, it was incorrect in its core accusation:

In order to make their claim, the Chamber needs to make a leap of faith – that the migrants were only in one direction and that they were all taxpayers. This is pure speculation: for example, with higher education being one of our major industries, a graduating class is going to have a lot of comings and going; and the Chamber only accounts for the goings.

And went on to cite trends in the number of IRS tax filers in Rhode Island. Unable to keep my fingers out of the fishbowl any longer, I explained that "tax years 2005 and 2006 saw migration TO Rhode Island of 43,774, with an aggregate AGI of $2,037,577,000, but migration FROM Rhode Island of 52,070, with an aggregate AGI of $2,522,327,000." (I also explained why the filer data wasn't directly applicable.) It was a quick I-should-already-be-in-bed comment, and I pretty much copied and pasted from the Excel file that I built from the IRS data last year. If only for rhetorical reasons, I should have been more explicit that the data is based on counties, not states, so both the inflow and outflow numbers include people who moved within Rhode Island, because Tom Sgouros correctly specified:

For 05-06, the IRS data I have says that 17,395 2006 returns were from people who moved from here to elsewhere, and that 12,968 people moved from elsewhere to here.

I should note, here, that the Chamber of Commerce's language is insufficiently specific that the data accounts for two years of migration. Adding the second year to Tom's number, we get the following for net losses of taxpayers and AGIs over the two years:

	Justin's taxpayers	Tom's taxpayers
Inflow	43,774	26,128
Outflow	52,070	34,424
Net outflow	8,296	8,296

Unless you're employed by the National Education Association of Rhode Island, you'll likely notice that the two totals are exactly the same, because the in-state migrants cancel themselves out. The same is true for AGI.

But rather than admit the obvious and attempt, as Sgouros did, to move the debate onto ground that is actually, well, debatable, Crowley dug in, saying that I've been "caught in a lie" and "exposed" and updating the post to accuse the Projo of fraud for a related editorial. Exposed I've been: of a desire to review numbers with those who dispute my conclusions and to clarify where we're looking at different things.

Given his slight change of status when he became the owner of RI Future, I'd been attempting some level of interblog comity, but it's so clear that Pat is of the do anything/say anything school of propaganda that it's difficult not to suggest that anybody who aligns themselves with him thereby damages their own credibility.

American Hate Groups Exposed!

There may really be reason for concern about terrorism among domestic hate groups:

After Tancredo entered the room, protesters kept him from speaking by shouting insults and holding a sign declaring “no dialogue with hate” in front of his face. Tancredo waited calmly while protestors held the sign and chanted…

After protestors exited the hallway, Tancredo spoke for about two minutes before a protestor outside the building banged on a window, shattering the glass.

Tancredo was escorted out of the room by police after he deemed the situation too volatile, Young said.

Protesters proceeded to chant “We shut him down; no racists in our town” and “Yes, racists, we will fight, we know where you sleep at night!”

They'll know much more detail than that once the Department of Homeland Security is done gathering information on people who hold those threatening conservative beliefs.

See, That's the Difference Between a Popular Movement and an Establishment Structure

National Education Association of Rhode Island Executive Director Bob Walsh expresses puzzlement over Colleen Conley's being allowed to be the spokesperson for the RI Tea Party:

on Buddy's show on Ch. 6 on Sunday - he went fairly easy on her after she could not answer basic questions about the size of RI's budget or where she was proposing to cut it. She was also on the second segment of Newsmakers. ...

Do you think if my side was having an event of this scale that we'd let one of out own appear on Buddy's show, or any show, that unprepared?

I'll confess that, on any given day in the recent past, I'd have been stumped by the question, "How large is Rhode Island's budget?" What I would cut is a different matter, but the notion that somebody could be prepared to that degree on such short notice likely strikes the reformist ear funny in a way that brings out two significant points. (Note that I'm putting aside the consideration that the Tea Party's focus was national.)

The first point is that the exact total budget number, of itself, isn't but so important from either an intellectual or rhetorical standpoint. Removed from context, it's meaningless. What's $7 billion (ish)? In order to assess whether that's too much, it is more significant to know that Rhode Island consistently ranks highly on matters of taxation, that its social programs are generous, that its public-sector unions are disproportionately well compensated compared with the private sector, and above all, that the budget deficit has been stepping up every year on a march toward a billion dollars of shortfall and that legislators won't take the steps necessary to turn it around.

The second, more critical, point is that the right-of-center reform movement in Rhode Island and across the country does not consist of folks who earn their living by reciting political arguments by which they stand to gain in their careers. Ask Ms. Conley a question about stationery, and she'll likely produce a more satisfactory answer. Ask me the standard rough opening for a three-foot door, and I'll ask you whether it's a six-six or six-eight and whether we're framing off finish or rough.

It would be more comparable, however, to ask me how many months worth of work I know my current employer to have or Colleen the size of the local market for custom illustrated cards, because the state budget is part of the public-sector total from which it is Mr. Walsh's job to extract amounts for his union's members. Personally, I've got too many numbers running through my head on a given day to have the capacity to recite the subsegment totals of RI government spending. We newly active citizens must rely on such strategies as generalizing the specifics that we read, hear, or see in the news into "too much," "too restrictive," "too generous."

This new dynamic — this increasingly engaged population — may be something for which Bob Walsh and his "side" aren't prepared. They won't be able to pull us into mutually canceling disputes over numbers, because we'll have to look them up, at which point we'll be able to explain how they're spinning them. And if they argue that we don't know what we're talking about — which they're already doing — well, that's more of a felt thing, from the audience's point of view, and not having memorized talking points is not a disadvantage if the speaker seems to have grasped the underlying issue and compensates for missing esoteria with good faith and honesty.

Buddy would likely stump Bob if he asked about the header size of his front entryway, but that wouldn't disqualify Mr. Walsh from suggesting that he'd like to be able to lock the door.

The CNN Reporter Just Couldn't Stand the Opposing Views

In the seven years or so since Fox News came on the scene in a real big way, the back and forth about which station is conservative and which is liberal has become redundant, and it's rare that examples are interesting, but an email from Our Country Deserves Better PAC highlights a telling scene.

Here is CNN's Susan Roesgen hectoring participants in a tea party crowd in Chicago. A sign likening President Obama to Hitler was the catalyst, but she then goes on to argue heatedly with a man whose statement had more to do with government principles than political rhetoric. Of course, during the previous president's term, she apparently thought it a splashy of levity that somebody in a Bush-Hitler-Satan mask made an appearance at a rally involving Catholic school girls.

My favorite part is in the first video, when she argues against the statement that President Lincoln believed in freedom from oppressive taxation by referencing the large amount of stimulus money recently apportioned for Lincoln's home state.

Targeting People with Dark Skin So As Not to Be Racist

Sometimes, one reads statements that leave the impression that the center line of American politics is a portal from one reality — with its own intellectual and moral standards — and another. Among the (predictable) criticisms being directed toward the Providence tea party is that the vast majority of those in attendance were light skinned, and in response to a comment by Real Deal Hope, on RI Future, that it was "an issue driven rally" with an open attendance opportunity, Matt Jerzyk offers the following:

While the event was an "open invitation," the event organizers did go around the state and speak at events, groups and businesses to drive up attendance. Anyone who has ever tried to organize an event knows that turnout is driven by specific outreach. Since my criticism apparently wasn't clear enough, let me give you a specific example. Did the event organizers go to Rhode Island's largest middle-class African-American church and ask for 5 minutes to speak about their event? Or the largest middle-class Colombian group in Central Falls or middle-class Cape Verdean group in East Providence? More to my point exactly, did they go on WBRU or PODER just like they went on every other radio station or did they sit down for an interview with UNIVISION or Providence en Espanol or the Providence American?

I could be wrong about this, but as far as I know, during the few weeks in which they organized the event, the RI Tea Party folks didn't "go around the state" speaking to groups, but made media appearances. They also didn't, I don't believe, go on WHJY, Cat Country, or "every other radio station" that doesn't have a news focus. If they did either of those things, I didn't hear about it.

That's ancillary to the point, which is the astonishing racial reductivism of Matt's suggestion. We on the right — particularly of the issue-driven, grassroots segment — target our message based on exhibited interests. When time is limited, we'll approach audiences that have exhibited receptivity to similar ideas and seek to work through media of general interest for the region. The assumption is that people exhibit their interests in accord with their individual beliefs and understanding, not on the basis of their skin or heritage.

To the left, tint is primary. In order to ensure that pictures of a crowd have color, they'll approach racially populated churches about government fiscal policy. They'll research ethnic enclaves in order to check off a hit-list of identity groups. By "racial inclusiveness," they clearly intend to divide and allocate people according to their race and then get representatives in a group photograph to promote their ideological cause. They mean to herd people into categories in order to more easily direct and manipulate them.

Matt may be correct that the hard-sell leftist effort to promote identity politics makes such a strategy politically savvy, in the current context, but I don't find it especially moral. And if I had skin of a darker hue, I'd be much more self-conscious about my physical appearance at a liberal rally than a conservative one, and I'd resent the effort to make me feel that I couldn't attend an event concerned with taxation without considering whether my fellow taxpayers were palpably conscious of my race.

As I walked around that crowd on Wednesday, I saw people. Contrary to the spin, some of them had darker skin than others, but I was paying more attention to signs and t-shirts.

A Disappointing Revelation of Character?

I have to say that I'm disappointed at this quotation from Tom Sgouros in a Providence Business News article:

The burden of state and local taxes has shifted from upper-income to middle-income Americans over the last two decades, "so people have a right to be angry, because the vast number of people are paying more and getting less than ever before," Sgouros said. "But their response to it is short-sighted and dumb."

He said the demonstrators are "ignorant, because they choose not to learn about the issues they claim to speak about — and they’re afraid if they do learn about it, they will lose the purity of their opinions."

When I first began having exchanges with him, I would have said that Tom was above this sort of blunt insult and categorical psychoanalysis. Leaving open, as always, the possibility that context and editing might have affected his actual meaning somewhat, I find myself wondering whether increasing success is leading Mr. Sgouros to play to his audience or frustration that his success hasn't been greater has made him mean.

Don't Let Them Convince You That It Was Something That It Wasn't

This is a topic that I intend to consider from a couple of angles for some posts tomorrow, but it's worth making the general suggestion that attempts by various folks to define yesterday's tea party in Providence as something that it wasn't, or in a light that doesn't really apply, suggests that they just don't understand what's going on among right-of-center grassroots movements and the right side of the blogosphere. It could be that a basic difference in priorities, interests, and style precludes their understanding.

Consider the professional/mainstream media inclination to highlight a partisan aspect to the rallies — actually, to embellish for the purpose of highlighting it. Last night, as I waited in studio to go on the air with Matt Allen, WPRO reporter Steve Klamkin opened the door to discuss the tea party and was adamant that it was a "Republican event." The response that I gave on air to Matt was that the correlation is only a detracting factor — making it truly a "partisan" event — if the motivation for attendance was partisan regardless of the message. This was the opposite.

But this morning, Mr. Klamkin's report highlighted one speaker: Representative Joe Trillo, who said a few extemporaneous words after signing a no-tax pledge. Consider that: A reporter who wishes to see the event as a partisan event made a point of portraying it that way — not only picking a speaker who is known to be Republican, for one reason or another, but singling out one who is, by the nature of his office, a Republican figure.

The Providence Journal did something similar by using a picture of Republican candidate Dan Reilly for its front-page story of the event. It certainly isn't a denigration of either Mr. Reilly or Rep. Trillo to suggest that a picture of Colleen Conley, Bill Felkner, or Helen Glover would have been more appropriate as the signature image.

More than half of the other speakers are not explicitly partisan and would have conveyed a better sense of what the bubbling unrest is about: It's about people forming a popular movement, and that should be a much more frightening prospect to entrenched powers than the inevitable fact that politicians will find their way to microphones.

Providence, RI, Tax Day Tea Party Speech

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This is one of those times in history when a society must make a decision. Social commentators of the near future will say one of two things about us: If we fail to be heard, then these tea parties, these expressions of outrage across the nation, are the final lunge of a fading culture, riddled with the errors of an unenlightened past. Or, if we can rein in our government, these demonstrations represent the reawakening of the American spirit, reasserting the principles of the United States.

Our country is defined by its principles. There is no picture of the typical American. We aren't a race. We aren't a religion. We aren't a tribe or a sect or a straight line of lineage. The typical American is a person in motion. With a swagger. Sometimes a smirk. Often a smile. But always, there's a set jaw and a confident stride toward the future — toward growth and improvement and a better life for all who'll but seek it.

Future historians will either tell the tale of a nation that tipped the scales toward the final decline of Western civilization, or they will celebrate the character of a people who saved the world once again. Because it was right, and because it was who they were. Who we are.

We are called, most critically, not to stand against an external enemy — although that exists — but against a corruption of spirit. There is a cancer running through our culture that wants ease instead of opportunity, that takes a life of stability to be a higher goal than a life of achievement. Powerful interests will punish those who strive and excel because they want to be the ones providing everybody else's comfort — defining everybody else's well-being.

We here today do not savor work, but freedom. If we aren't free to err and struggle, we aren't free to succeed. If we aren't free to build organizations and businesses and lives according to our beliefs and our goals, and based on our own experiences, then we just aren't free. There is no stability without risk, and freedom is the only defense against stagnation.

The forces of stagnation have waged a decades-long campaign to advance their cause incrementally. Little by little. While they hold sway in the halls of power they inject their principles of big government and nanny-state dictation into the body politic, and then, when the poison reveals itself in painful consequences, they recede into the shadows and await their next chance.

When a welfare and social policy regime results in a desperate underclass, these forces point to a bogeyman of bigotry. Conveniently, it's always to be found among their political opposition. When quasi-governmental lenders back unsecure investments and build an edifice of financial straw, would-be magicians of the political sphere spread our great-grandchildren's earnings around in order to establish the principle that government knows best how to run all things, large and small. They connive to foster dependency. They know that an antidote never fully overcomes addiction.

They take, and they tax. They regulate, and they assert authority. They preach their own superiority. And every year, they control a little bit more of our lives, telling a distracted citizenry that they are all that stands between our families and utter collapse and that only their guidance can protect us from our prejudices. They push the fallacy that an increasingly complicated society requires centralized oversight and central planning, when the polar opposite is true. Well, I'm sorry, Senators Reed and Whitehouse, Congressmen Langevin and Kennedy, but no matter how eloquent and genuinely intelligent our new president may be, even if he's the brightest bulb in that dim capital, his thinking is fundamentally flawed. It is dangerous. Oppressive.

If we cannot put a stop to the lapse in our national ideals currently seeping into Washington — very similar to the illness that has ravaged Rhode Island — we will cease to be the United States of America. If we cannot say to the president and his followers, "you lied — you sold us a break, a period of cooperation," if we cannot say that and make the schemers in our government stop pasting a radical pastiche where they promised the even lines of a new realism, then they will have no fear. They will march right into our lives. They will know that the nice image of helping our old country to cross the road to a time of undefined hope and dubious change is suitable propaganda to cover their power grab.

I suspect that most of you here today now understand that there was never any intention to compromise. Those who rule our nation — and who would rule the "global community" — have an idea of compromise that is merely to mouth some pleasing words about listening and then to do whatever they want, take whatever they want. And that is why we must be uncompromising in our message. Enough is enough. That is the statement that the people of these United States have to make. That we have to make here today. And that we must continue to make as we turn our country back toward the right direction in the months and years to come.

A Society Lacking Confidence Will Wither.

Ed Achorn's column, yesterday, is more relevant to today's demonstration than may seem at first to be the case:

What's at the center of [Brown's Columbus Day] debate, and others like it, is whether we believe in our civilization anymore. Growing numbers of people seem to be losing faith in it.

To my mind, Columbus Day was never really about the man himself, or the historic events of 1492 and their immediate aftermath. It was about what he symbolized: courage, intelligence, endurance, a willingness to risk everything seeking new worlds. Columbus Day was a celebration of Western Civilization and, ultimately, the most magnificent country that arose in the New World, the United States of America.

The disparagement of Columbus, much like the disparagement of the Founders so popular in recent years, seems designed to break down the faith of young people, and in time most Americans, that this really is an exceptional place, a country that has achieved unique things in world history because of one thing: freedom.

A lack of belief in ourselves has much to do with America's current economic predicament. As we've drifted from a desire for opportunity to a demand for ease and stability, we've created the structure that enabled the "too big to fail" label and the concomitant greed. Furthermore, it is a loss of ideals that is leading us down the wrong path toward recovery.

More than anything, we must reclaim our confidence in the society that our founders intended to build.

Insight Across Rhode Island

Stephen DiGianfilippo of East Greenwich ponders whom the stimulus actually stimulates:

Like most members of Congress, I, too, lacked the time to actually read the 1,000-plus pages of the so-called "stimulus package." From what I understand from media coverage, however, it provides funds for things like Food Stamps and "free" health care; "tax cuts" for people who don’t pay income taxes (i.e., disguised welfare checks); environmental studies; automakers (which, ironically, are themselves largely victims of other special interests); governmental unions, and various projects that benefit private-sector unions.

Besides a measly check worth about $8 per week, however, the average American isn't being stimulated at all. In fact, he may now have a better chance of losing his private-sector job instead.

He goes on to note the hundreds of millions that labor unions invested in the purchase of Democrat votes, which leads into some thoughts on RI teacher union antics from Warwick's Joseph Weaver:

What is especially discouraging is that in a state that considers itself liberal, so much power is wielded by one of its most reactionary forces, the teachers unions.

Charter schools, school vouchers, mayors' schools, school consolidation — all progressive, enlightened steps designed to give parents and students a choice in their education opportunities and put the focus on the child — are constantly attacked and thwarted by teachers unions, which make it clear that they come first. The first question asked when change is proposed is not "Will the child come out better" but "Will the union come out better." If the answer to the latter is no, consider the issue dead.

Hey, I'll accept the notion of school choice and vouchers as "progressive"... if only because of whom it would annoy.

Sex Is Not All

It's a tragicomic truism that members of the cultural movement, with roots in the "Sexual Revolution," that presses for the acceptance of ever more licentious behavior, that peppers popular culture with lewd images and innuendo, and that leverages carnal lust as an enticement toward the trap of its radical worldview often accuse those who stand against them in defense of our society of being obsessed with sex. Here, in the words of commenter Pragmatist:

And why not just admit that this criticism of the president is really about sex Justin? We all know that religious conservatives, above all else, are obsessed with sex: the consequences of straight sex and existence of gay sex. Religious concerns about the environment, war, torture, income inequality seldom pop up on the conseravtive radar. But sex? Well then, hold the presses!

It doesn't take much capacity for objectivity to observe that none of the other issues that Pragmatist lists find anywhere near the concerted advocacy of sex when it comes to promoting sin qua sin, from the religious point of view. Nobody advocates lessons in safe-torture to grammar school children. (Abstinence is unrealistic, after all!) Nobody proposes that war should be a matter of individual choice made as free of consequences as possible.

Moreover, those not quite so blinkered by hostility to the expression of traditional views will likely comprehend that, for religious conservatives, chief among the "consequences of straight sex" is the creation of human life, and therein lies the motivation for determination. Note, for evidence, that the conservative radar is also well tuned to the overtures of scientists to transform human life into a utility. Progressives appear to believe that conservatives see protection of embryos and objection to cloning as front-guard barriers against the fundamental normalization of abortion, which (the story holds) we oppose because cannot keep our minds off the activity that creates a being to be aborted in the first place. The failure to see the true consistent core of this belief system is strongly suggestive of a desperate need to maintain the feeling of moral imprimatur for the commission of evil.

But what of torture? Isn't that an evil act? Yes, of course, and I've yet to hear a religious conservative argue for torture of an anything-to-extract-information degree, and general agreement that torture is unacceptable contributes to the skewed public perception. Because we all agree that our government should not be lopping off fingers one joint at a time, the discussion quickly moves to determination of the line. Truth be told, I've had discussions with other religious conservatives in which I voiced my difficulty seeing mild sleep deprivation and droning music, even stress positions, as torture; that doesn't indicate that conservatism is a philosophy in which torture isn't an issue, but that some of us believe that interrogations of unlawful combatants can be a bit more strenuous than a questionnaire. It's also relevant that the conversation would be a non-starter were the principle under scrutiny the permissibility of performing "enhanced interrogation" on innocent civilians.

What of income inequality? Isn't greed one of the seven deadlies? Aren't we called to serve our brothers and sisters? Yes, of course, but we on the right believe that opportunity is the more effective means of assisting the poor and that coercively redistributive power in the hands of a government body is a recipe for even more damaging outcomes.

Indeed, cycling through the issues that he mentions, one thought recurs with each: Pragmatist really hasn't followed internal debates among conservatives. What emerges from such a study is that there are basic principles held to be irreducible and a broad, fluid field of prudential lines.

At the core of them all, of course, is life, and among the most thoroughly agreed upon conclusions among religious righties is that a society that encourages (not forces) healthy personal choices endows its people with the most powerful possible protectant against a corruption that deadens the instinct for justice across the board. The most sure sources of instruction for discerning social necessities are the traditions that enabled the moral and corporeal advancement of our culture over millennia in the first place.

The Left's Congenital Racism

Overwhelming obligations and only mild interest have limited the attention that I've paid to the JournoList controversy with which readers of the national conservative blogosphere will surely be familiar. Now that the discussion has transitioned into one of the semantics of racism, however, a brief comment is irresistible.

By way of background, New Republic publisher Marty Peretz is currently under fire for referring to the "congenital corruption" of Latin American countries. His detractors declare the phrase to be racist — imputing corruption to Latinos, I suppose. Having become entangled in the spat, Jonah Goldberg posted the following email earlier today:

The people who think that "congenital corruption" is racist are just showing their own ignorance of the meaning of the word. It has two meanings, 1)from birth, 2) essential nature. Describing Latin American countries as congenitally corrupt is absolutely accurate and has nothing to do with race. Corruption in those countries is systematic and endemic (essential nature) and that state has existed since those countries' independence (from birth). While many assume that a congenital birth defect means a genetic disorder, the term congenital includes both hereditary and environmentally caused disorders.

Peretz' critics are dangerously close to "niggardly" territory.

As accurate as such semantic analysis may be, I don't think it quite captures the underlying error of thought, which ultimately exposes the congenital racism of liberals. In short, they believe race and ethnicity to be much more determinative than do conservatives. One cannot, in their view, declare the political tendencies of a region to be hopelessly and pervasively corrupt at their very core (i.e., congenital) without its being a statement of genetic qualities of the people who inhabit the region. One hears a similar ring in declarations that democracy will never work in the Middle East; it's not put forward as a statement of cultural habit, but of personal capacity.

It's this same racist impulse that raises cultural sensitivity to the status of a high ideal. An observation of foolishness in another's culture is cast as an attack on their innate intelligence, because they are assumed to be capable of intellectual disassociation from those practices. Standing firmly astride one's own culture (as with crucifixes in the classrooms of a Catholic university) is said to be an affront to non-sectarian students, because the uninitiated are presumed not to have the maturity to tolerate pluralism.

Hoping Against Hope for Presidential Wisdom

Curious about how conservative Obama fans are getting along, I checked in with the man whose leg the messiah made tingle with knowledge, David Brooks. Here is a guy who reallly, really wants to believe:

If ever this kind of domestic revolution were possible, this is the time and these are the people to do it. The crisis demands a large response. The people around Obama are smart and sober. Their plans are bold but seem supple and chastened by a realistic sensibility.

Yet they set off my Burkean alarm bells. I fear that in trying to do everything at once, they will do nothing well. I fear that we have a group of people who haven't even learned to use their new phone system trying to redesign half the U.S. economy. I fear they are going to try to undertake the biggest administrative challenge in American history while refusing to hire the people who can help the most: agency veterans who are registered lobbyists. ...

It'll be interesting to see who's right. But I can't even root for my own vindication. The costs are too high. I have to go to the keyboard each morning hoping Barack Obama is going to prove me wrong.

What'll be interesting is how Brooks and others gauge Obama's success. "If Obama is mostly successful," he writes, "then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited." Such judgments have a way of being obscured by the turmoil of government and society.

After the budget speech, for example, Brooks sought to blame political innocence, not a fundamental intellectual misconception, for Obama's willingness to embrace a destructive half-plan for America's future:

The bigger problem is health care. This is an issue where everybody wants benefits they don't pay for, where perverse incentives have created an expensive system that doesn't deliver results. This is an area where aggressive presidential leadership is mandatory.

Yet in no other area does the administration cede so much authority. The administration has over-learned the lessons of the Clinton-care fiasco. They're not going to send up a detailed 1,400-page program. Fine. But they're not pushing a plan at all.

Instead, replicating the model that did such harm to the stimulus package, they are merely outlining eight general principles and then sending the matter up to Capitol Hill. They vow to have a series of "conversations" and then presumably at some point some group of committee chairmen will write a bill or a bunch of bills. ...

Even though the budget is not all one would have hoped, I'd trust the folks in the Obama administration to craft a decent health care plan before I'd trust the Congressional Old Bulls. Obama blew a mighty trumpet Tuesday night, but after you blow the trumpet, you actually have to charge.

Perhaps that trust is rooted in a swindle, and the Obama team is ceding authority because it is more concerned with appearances than actions. That is the great flaw of big government philosophy: It moves forward on the assumption that a plan could be created... by somebody... and then fumbles for anything that would maintain the illusion, because no concrete proposal will actually work. The upshot is that the powerful manipulate the new well of money and influence while the general public suffers.

Dispelling Myths About Bipartisanship

Can we now be clear about what it fundamentally means to strive for "bipartisan" action?

Reed said economists "on both sides of the political divide" concluded "this stimulus was necessary, that we had to stop the job losses, we had to get people back into the marketplace, that there was a very real fear of even worse job losses." He said the package represents "a rather rapid response to the most significant problem facing the country, which I think speaks volumes of the president's leadership and his ability to get difficult things done."

But he cautioned that more must be done, such as "additional efforts to increase lending by the banking community."

While campaigning, Obama decried partisanship, and once in office, he tried to gain support for the stimulus package from Republicans in Congress. But the package passed without a single vote from House Republicans, and it received support from just three Republican senators — Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, whom conservatives deride as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).

In response to Republican criticism of the stimulus package, Reed questioned the GOP's claim to fiscal conservatism, noting the national debt rose sharply during President Bush’s administration. "I think after presiding over the economic policies that led us to so much of this," he said, "their standing to be critical is really diminished. But I think what they did is they adopted a political posture, not one based on a pragmatic analysis of the markets and what had to be done."

So should Obama keep striving for bipartisanship?

Brown University political science Prof. James Morone had an op/ed piece in The New York Times on Tuesday, saying that while Obama seems eager "to restore a culture of cooperation in Washington," it's not going to be easy because "that golden bipartisan era never existed."

"Great presidents do manage to push past partisanship — not by reaching out to the other party, but by overwhelming it with a new vision," Morone wrote. "Franklin Roosevelt did not offer a hand to the defeated Hooverites." Rather, FDR's success stemmed from "the collective, social-gospel vision he articulated from the start."

"Bipartisan" is a desirable marker of actions that are so clear and popular that even the necessary political tension that should exist in a healthy society does not apply to them (at least fully). If the weighty and complicated matters of our day sail along with the winds of a bipartisan spirit, it means that our government is not functioning properly.

Travis Rowley: No Country for Black Individualism

The Coen Brothers' 2007 film No Country For Old Men revolves around the tale of several young men engaged in a violent race for a satchel of cash. Tommy Lee Jones plays an aging sheriff investigating the depressing trail of bloodshed, markings that inform the old man that the customs and morals that guided his generation have decayed even faster than he has. Jones ends up as a depiction of the anguish experienced by people left without a country they can call home.

Democrats remain on their quest to offer similar anguish to African Americans, as liberals now embark on their fifth decade aimed at stripping these reliable party constituents of American nationalism.

Liberal mouthpieces have long emphasized a shameful American history, one marked by slavery and segregation. And they insist that, even today, a majority of Americans hold contempt for dark-skinned people. "Something is clearly wrong when the government's most effective affirmative-action program is the preference people of color receive when entering not college, but the criminal-justice system," proclaims one prominent progressive text titled A Covenant With Black America — which goes on to say that there is "a multi-headed, multi-tentacled monster out there devouring blacks who live in certain neighborhoods."

Such rhetoric has caused many African Americans to experience feelings of anti-Americanism and national detachment. Blacks now see mirages of racism everywhere, albeit disguised by "code words" and "institutional racism." The outrage last year over Barack Obama being referred to as "articulate" provided a powerful example of this paranoia.

Anger and hatred typically accompany blacks' racial anxiety. Before the start of a game last year the NBA's Josh Howard said to a live camera, "The Star-Spangled Banner is going on. I don't celebrate this [expletive]. I'm black." Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to even stand for the National Anthem, stating that the American flag was a "symbol of oppression" and that the United States has a long "history of tyranny."

In Democratic circles, this is known as "patriotism."

These are not so much black sentiments, as much as they are liberal. But many blacks now subscribe to the anti-American wing of contemporary liberalism.

Last year Michelle Obama said that America was "just downright mean" and admitted, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." And any Google search of Jeremiah Wright provides a score of videos showing Barack Obama's longtime pastor condemning America for practicing "state terrorism" and for "inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." We find Wright referring to the United States as the "US of KKK A" and thundering, "Not God bless America. Goddam America!"

His all-black congregation cheers.

To be without a home is to live with pain. But this has been the Democratic scheme for decades — to promote government intrusion by convincing minorities that most Americans, especially Republicans, reject them. Republicans are racist, and against affirmative action. Democrats care, and will give you stuff.

The misinformation campaign has succeeded. Many black Americans now view racial solidarity as more important than black individualism. Each year a handful of notorious black leaders convene an event called the State of the Black Union, calling all "brothers" to recognize the uniformed plight that all African Americans endure.

Liberals stripped blacks of their country, so they concocted a new one — the Black Union.

Because racial camaraderie has resulted in more than 90% of blacks predictably voting for Democrats, the advice to be more "inclusive" is often delivered to the GOP: Replicate the way in which Democrats pander to minorities in order to attract blacks to the Republican Party.

But safeguarding the feelings of minorities by adhering to liberals' politically correct pap is precisely the cause of blacks' adoption of big-government, anti-American liberalism. Do Republicans really want to be associated with such a philosophy?

The advice is backwards. Blacks are the ones to make concessions. They must abandon their liberalism before the party of conservatism can consider their membership. A simple matter of principle.

Yet, in order to convince Republicans to alter their strategy, Los Angeles-based writer Chaise Nunnally recently referenced in the Projo the Don Imus controversy, in which Imus referred to the Rutgers women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hoes." Even though Nunnally found the opinions expressed by conservatives involved in the debate "legitimate and defensible," he thought "they also struck the wrong note in communicating with the black community on a racially sensitive topic."

Nunnally's counsel was to be more racially symbolic, recommending Republicans find "a more race-sensitive tack to woo black voters." Join the left in their truth-stifling political correctness in order to trick blacks into voting for you.

That's how much liberals respect minorities.

Republicans would be better off listening to black conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, who recently reminded his readers, "Most Americans' principles are closer to those of the Republicans than to those of the Democrats ... [Republicans] won big when they stood for something and told the people what that something was ... Ronald Reagan was the classic example. But another example would be the stunning Republican victories in the 1994 Congressional elections ... Articulating the message of Newt Gingrich's 'contract for America' was a key to that historic victory."

Republicans win when they underline conservatism, not when they dilute their principles by pandering to special interests. They should leave such prostitution to the Democrats.

For black Americans addicted to Democrats' coddling sense of self-pity and collectivism, they will find no such slavery within the Republican Party. Only when blacks finally recognize the big-government whip held in Democratic hands, can the Party of Lincoln help them regain their independence, sustain their dignity, strengthen their families, and recapture their country.

Travis Rowley is the Chairman of the RI Young Republicans, and author of Out of Ivy: How a Liberal Ivy Created a Committed Conservative.

Exporting the Culture of Death

For his latest column, Bishop Tobin imagined the interview he would conduct with President Obama:

TOBIN: But the use of tax dollars to pay for abortions is very controversial. It's a divisive policy. It violates the conscience of millions of Americans who respect life and oppose abortion. Isn't that completely contrary to your goal of fostering unity in the nation?

OBAMA: Bishop Tobin, let's be clear. I said in my inauguration speech that with all the problems our nation is facing we have to overcome narrow ideological positions and move beyond childish behaviors.

TOBIN: But, Mr. President, providing tax money to support abortion — isn't that in itself an ideological position?

OBAMA: No, not in my view.

TOBIN: But do you consider the heartfelt convictions of pro-lifers to be "childish behaviors?"

OBAMA: Well, not exactly, but let's move on . . .

TOBIN: Is it safe to assume that you consider the use of tax dollars to pay for abortions overseas to be good foreign policy?

OBAMA: I believe that people overseas should have the same rights we Americans have — the right to kill their children and use abortion as a form of birth control.

TOBIN: But shouldn't we be using foreign aid for more positive reasons — for example, to provide food, clothing, shelter and medicine to impoverished children?

OBAMA: Bishop, obviously you're missing the point. If you control the population and eliminate the children, you don't have to worry about giving them food, clothing, shelter and medicine now do you?

Nicholas Eberstadt the question of whether such a response would be accurate:

Population alarmists and their allies in the U.N. are deluding themselves when they claim government intervention can reduce fertility rates and "stabilize" population. Their mantra is that education, high literacy and cheap birth control lead to lower birth rates.

Health, literacy and voluntary contraception are meritorious objectives in their own right, irrespective of any influence on population growth. But it is misleading to assert that they predictably reduce birth rates.

Take literacy. The adult-literacy rate in 2006 was about a third higher in Malawi than Morocco (54 percent vs. 40 percent), yet fertility levels in Malawi were double. Family-planning campaigns are similarly unpredictable. For instance, in 1974 Mexico started a vigorous campaign to cut population growth and got fertility levels down by 56 percent but Brazil's fertility level fell by 54 percent with no campaign at all, in the same quarter century. These are not cherry-picked examples. There is simply no way of knowing in advance the impact of family-planning programs on birth rates.

It turns out that the single best international predictor of fertility levels is the number of children that women say they would like. ...

Yes, culture is the determinant of such behavior, and it has been the argument of we on the Right that the normalization of abortion and extensive promotion of contraceptives tilts the culture the wrong way. To Leftists, however, there is no culture but their culture, and whether they arrive at their policies based on their beliefs or hope to promote their beliefs through their policies is moot — indeed, irrelevant.

But Whose Truth Must We Tell?

Now here's an interesting, disturbing idea:

Undoubtedly you've heard the calls for a return of the Fairness Doctrine. Listen, I am so sick and tired of "fair and balanced" as the next person yet I believe in separation of press and state.

Hmmm. What to do...what to do?

I got it!

How about reversing the court decision that actually states the media is not legally required to tell the viewer the truth!

As Northeastern conservatives are particularly well trained to understand, based on experience walking deep in the heart of bizarro country and often (for those of us who've gone through a political conversion of some degree) a memorable period of discovering that everything you thought you knew about the world was wrong, the concept of "telling the truth" is not immune to spin and relativity. For effectiveness and accuracy, no legal policy will ever match habits of discerning credibility and applying common sense. Indeed, a government stamp can numb the drive to exercise those two knacks.

More Tax Aversion from the Tax-and-Spend Left

I'm sure Tom Daschle had every intention of filing three years of amended tax returns (one for every year since he was bumped from public office, I believe) whether or not he'd been presented with the opportunity of joining the Obama administration:

Thomas A. Daschle recently filed amended tax returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 reporting $128,203 in additional tax and $11,964 in interest. The adjustments resulted from additional income for consulting services and the use of a car service, and reductions in charitable contribution deductions. Senator Daschle filed the amended returns voluntarily after Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate the senator to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Presidential Transition Team identified the charitable contribution issue and Senator Daschle self-identified the income adjustments.

If not, citizens of the United States of America — even those who support the current president — might have reason to question whether Mr. Daschle possesses the ethical fortitude to hold appointed office.

Up Being Down as a Political Philosophy

The way in which individuals construct an understanding of their societies is what makes it fatal to paint them all with the bold colors of their affiliations: People will be particularly amenable to certain explanations for events around them — whether they've been pushed toward prescribed priorities via social clichés, have an economic interest in a particular construction, or some combination — and will act accordingly. Their culpability is not diminished by that fact, but it does have implications for any strategy intended to change their minds (or at least persuade them to loosen their grip on something precious that they're strangling).

I bring this up in an exercise to deepen my empathy for those whose behavior I so deplore and whose practices I find so detrimental to the state. Imagine yourself, for instance, in the place of somebody who's a few steps closer to the left of political center and/or whose very livelihood is dramatically reliant upon the strength of organized public-sector unions. From such a position, Pat Crowley's response to a description of the forces involved in East Providence by Travis Rowley might just succeed in its certain end of pushing you a little farther away from cold reality (emphasis added):

But, like I said before, there is a certain class of folks in Rhode island that are upset that their standing as overlords is being challenged. They're not upset about class warfare, they're upset that the under classes are starting to fight back in the war they have been waging against workers and poor people for generations. Rowley's pieces, now published more frequently in The Journal, expose the glass jaw of the right wing. The joining in common cause of disgraced Education Partnership refugees, so-called Taxpayer groups with out of state memberships (watch this video), and anti-immigrant bullies in common cause against teachers and unions is called Astroturfing. The reason why they are doing it: Rowley's first line: "UNIONS, the engine of the Rhode Island left..."

In this bizarre world, a young go-getting member of the state's almost non-existent opposition party is the emblem of a class of "overlords," struggling to maintain the oppression of a category of citizens whose average household income is actually well above the average for the state. Crowley even provides a link to a conspiratorial definition for "astroturfing":

The use of paid shills to create the impression of a popular movement, through means like letters to newspapers from soi-disant 'concerned citizens', paid opinion pieces, and the formation of grass-roots lobbying groups that are actually funded by a PR group (AstroTurf is fake grass; hence the term).

In your empathetic mode, doesn't it all begin to make sense? Put aside your first-hand knowledge that the local reform groups are really just citizens who've had enough and imagine that this small group of vocal people who wish to make changes to your enviable employment package are actually a front group for powerful interests attempting to keep the lid on society's populist potential. Only you, the middle-class union worker, remain as a shining emblem of The Possible for your fellow workers. (And besides, who wants to work into their 60s?)

Under those circumstances, you too might find yourself telling a financially struggling carpenter why you and your even-better-paid spouse (with the family business and a rental property) absolutely deserve an increase in remuneration even as the state's economy collapses. You might even be inclined to listen to the flashy union executive as he explains to you that screaming and intimidating elected municipal officials is all just part of the negotiation game — absolutely essential to the prevention of backsliding into indentured servitude.

If the so-called "taxpayers" aren't villains, then the whole worldview into which you've molded your career deserves some scrutiny. And if Crowley's audience begins to question whether there's actually a chance — a hint worth considering — that they've somehow become the bad guys in the story, his own lucrative position as an operative for an immensely powerful union organization (that actually does fund astroturfers) comes under threat.

Behold the Fruits of "Academic Freedom"

Ever have an educator explain to you that it is important to hear all sides of an argument and to engage the opposition in dialogue? Well, for many humanities professors, that may be a lesson preached more than practiced:

Anyone who needed evidence that the culture wars are far from over could find it here at the annual gathering of the Modern Language Association last week. As the response to David Horowitz's appearance on an MLA panel showed all too plainly, the culture wars haven't ended; they've just reached an ugly stalemate. ...

... In fact, Mr. Horowitz's appearance at the MLA meeting, he said, is the first time that he has defended his views in person before a scholarly group. ...

But members of the audience weren't having any of it. They wanted to challenge the panel about one thing: why Mr. Horowitz was there in the first place.

"Are you now proud that you are the only organization to invite Horowitz to speak?" an angry Barbara Foley of Rutgers University at Newark asked. "Did you do your homework" about Mr. Horowitz's blog, FrontPagemag.com? she continued, to audience applause. Grover Furr of Montclair State University and a self-described "victim" of Mr. Horowitz's book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, said he objected to Mr. Horowitz's being invited "not because of his views but because he is a liar." Another audience member complained that out of thousands of MLA members, the organization had picked "two FrontPage columnists" for the panel. ...

At one point, a member of the audience could be seen giving Mr. Horowitz the finger. Brian Kennelly of California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, who presided over the event, wrote on The Chronicle's Web site that he observed an audience member repeatedly mouthing an obscenity to Mr. Horowitz — behavior he called "troublesome" and "repugnant."

It's telling, and not very surprising, that a roomful of academics required the supervision of security guards. I wonder if they had their Tasers at the ready.

ADDENDUM:

It was Rhode Island's own Rocco DiPippo, by the way, who blew the whistle on Professor Furr. I suspect Grover would think twice before directing his spittle toward Rocco in person.

Who You Calling Angry!!!

I was disappointed to come across this musing from Providence Journal Opinion Page Editor Bob Whitcomb (via RI Future):

Why do right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh do so well and liberal ones not so well? Consider that Colin McEnroe, a rude liberal, has just been fired by WTIC in Hartford and that national liberal talk-show hosts have had a tough time hanging on to their jobs.

And why do letters to the editor even in liberal states like Rhode Island and Connecticut feature so many right-wingers complaining about high taxes, overspending and allegedly corrupt legislators and so on even as the general electorate elects liberal Democrats by wide margins?

Simple. It's because the conservatives tend to be angrier than liberals and anger is a powerful energizer and seller. Radio stations, all too many of which are owned by a few few national companies, know that they need intensity of listenership above all to sell advertising time. Hiring a right-wing host is a good strategy for selling advertising time.

It's similar to why newspapers devote so much space to sports: Followers of teams are committed readers.

That is not to say that many liberals aren't infuriated, too. Consider the sometimes almost psychotic hatred of G.W. Bush. But, all in all, right wingers tend to be angrier, longer.

There are, no doubt, talk radio hosts who are strikingly angry, but I still have trouble counting Rush Limbaugh among them. The proverbial heavy breathing on Limbaugh is more guffaw than growl; the most strenuous tone is typically stunned amusement at liberals' insanity. The same is true on most talk radio shows. The missing factor in the usual liberal assessment of their heat is the length of the programs, generally with unscripted conversation throughout. Show me the person who can discuss current events with strangers for three hours per day — often reaching down to core ideology — without occasionally raising his voice, and I'll show you a man without beliefs.

If anger plays a role in the disparity in talk radio success between conservatives and liberals, the key isn't the depth or longevity of emotion, but the different modes of expressing it — experiencing it. It's the distinction between a heated rollick that sometimes approaches the push too hard and a passive-aggressive seething. There's a viciousness to liberal anger — made painfully prominent in that "almost psychotic hatred of G.W. Bush" — a wipe-them-out-make-them-irrelevant belittling. Right wing anger is, in its way, more masculine; it pounds on the front door, bloodies the lip, and leaves as if the point's been made. That sort of anger, because visible in advance, can be talked down, soothed, whereas the other sort of anger slides the knife in and out with mute certainty.

But I wonder if even that much explanation is necessary. It might be more productive to chart ideological leanings demographically and align media by occupation. NPR's major non-music shows align with commutes. The king of conservative talk radio covers the after-lunch span of the work day. Perhaps the critical factor is the political norm among those who can talk — and listen to talk — while they work.

The thread is continuous across these various points, weaving a picture of masculine sparring, most often of a good-natured tone, among men whose hands are occupied more than their minds at work. Of course there are broad exceptions (pun intended or not), but it is the vast average of a group that will spell success for a daily show.

As for Whitcomb's association of talk radio with letters to the editor, well, I imagine Bob designates the political inclinations of writers based on the topics that they raise. Letters don't come, like mine, marked with a "conservative" stamp. Therefore, I'd expect letters complaining about "high taxes, overspending and allegedly corrupt legislators" to be especially common in liberal states, in which at least the first two qualities are a matter of principle.

The Look of "Balance" in the New Year

It isn't my intention, with this post, to gripe about not being included on a list in which we'd be in awkward company, but I do think it worthwhile to point out that Crowley's "Rhode Island Blog Round Up" probably gives a better sense of the truth than declarations by a man who considers them cheap indeed:

... if the blog is going to continue to be a success, people who still need to be convinced will have to be welcomed into the conversation.

... While the Projo has layers of editorial review, local TV has too little time for in depth discussions, and talk radio is more bluster than brains, RIFUTURE is a place for people of all political stripes to take their message directly to the people.

In true lefty fashion, Crowley can be expected simply to move the boundaries of which political stripes are fit for civilized discussion.

Corporations Are Only People When Barney Wants to Give Them Something

I just came across this bit of economic philosophy from Congressman Barney Frank (D - MA), on 60 Minutes, that contradicts the standard liberal construct (emphasis added):

STAHL: But there was never any doubt that Frank himself didn't want the car companies to go under. What about the idea that, in capitalism, if a company doesn't cut it, they die? It's over.

FRANK: And that's what Herbert Hoover said. And Franklin Roosevelt said no.

STAHL: That's what Darwin said.

FRANK: Yes, it's true. And Darwin was a very good biologist. I don't think he was much of an economist.

STAHL: What we're now faced is with all the taxpayers having to prop up companies that made terrible decisions consistently.

FRANK: No, we're not propping up companies. That's your mistake. We're propping up individuals. The world doesn't consist of companies. The world are people, the country is people. And yes, it is possible to argue that the government should stay out of-

STAHL: But then — but then you're talking about welfare.

FRANK: Yeah, I'm for welfare. You're not? Are you for letting people starve?

One could quip that it apparently takes union membership to make the individual employee worthy of props... so to speak. Suffice to say that the likes of Frank have been all too willing to look beyond the individuals whom companies support when they've decried "corporate welfare" and demanded that corporations be taxed as if they're people.

On Love and Confidence

Perhaps it's his lack of children that enables liberal columnist Joel Stein so succinctly to enunciate one of the more damaging failures of philosophy in modern culture:

True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for.

The ineluctable consequence of a belief that "true love" entails certainty in its object's perfection is the conclusion that one does not love that object when flaws inevitably emerge. Can it be doubted that this is a common pathology in our era? Irresponsible fathers leave their children because they prove difficult. Wives leave their husbands because they can't maintain that alluring blend of mystery and security. And Joel Stein is only "in 'like' with [his] country" because its people are flawed.

That said, I'll acknowledge that love "because it's mine" — what Stein calls "tribalism" — is intellectually unsatisfying and, indeed, stinks of self deception. One should no more love based on happenstance than one should hate based on coincidence. The lingering "what if" of those bases for such strong emotions can fester and corrupt.

No, love — whether of child, spouse, or country — must be a matter of spark and decision. The spark is of inspiration — the comprehension of something in the other that rests in the palms like a precious gem — and the decision is to commit to intertwinement — even when beauty fades and quirks begin to rankle, even when the child rebels and the nation falls into the hands of a political enemy, even when the gem no longer gleams from beneath layers of muck. The failure of such love is less evidence that the object is not worthy of being loved than an indication that the erstwhile lover is incapable of loving.

Thus it is that Stein pats himself on the back for his intellectual complexity, even as he exhibits simplicity of self-comprehension:

... I still think conservatives love America for the same tribalistic reasons people love whatever groups they belong to. These are the people who are sure Christianity is the only right religion, that America is the best country, that the Republicans have the only good candidates, that gays have cooties.

I wish I felt such certainty. Sure, it makes life less interesting and nuanced, and absolute conviction can lead to dangerous extremism, but I suspect it makes people happier. I'll never experience the joy of Hannity-level patriotism. I'm the type who always wonders if some other idea or place or system is better and I'm missing out.

Although his claim is of a native circumspection, Stein is apparently very certain that it is false to claim Christianity as "the only right religion" and that it is simplistic to rank America as "the best country" (leave the two lapses into partisan rhetoric aside). It is difficult to take Stein at his word, therefore, that he "wonders" whether something better exists; there aren't really any mystery countries out there, after all. His reader can infer with confidence, from Stein's writing and his identified ideology, that he already knows what idea and system would be better and will love the place that most closely approximates his utopia.

Joel is not wrong that he cannot love his country as others do, because a requirement of love's commitment is acceptance, to the point of a willingness to change rather than impose. After the spark and the decision comes growth, of the sort that lattice enables in vines.

Stein ends his column with a statement of recognition that he cannot love his country as he professes to love his wife. Presumably he's made a deliberate attempt not to "always wonder" whether he isn't missing out on someone better. If I were to advise the lady, though, I'd suggest that she see if she can't bring her hubby around to a less abashed patriotism, perhaps beginning with a flag lapel pin as a St. Valentine's Day gift.

A Gift to the RI Right

I don't know what makes Ian think think this news would "irritate" us: "Crowley to succeed Jerzyk at RI's Future." There's even more reason for optimism in the fact that the RI Left doesn't understand what a gift to Ocean State conservatives this is.

Life as We Know It, or More Incitement to Riot

And now for an opportunity for Northeastern conservatives to nod in a knowing fashion:

... just before the election, [14-year-old Illinois student] Catherine consulted with her history teacher, then bravely wore a unique T-shirt to school and recorded the comments of teachers and students in her journal. The T-shirt bore the simple yet quite subversive words drawn with a red marker:

"McCain Girl."

"I was just really curious how they'd react to something that different, because a lot of people at my school wore Obama shirts and they are big Obama supporters," Catherine told us. "I just really wanted to see what their reaction would be."

Immediately, Catherine learned she was stupid for wearing a shirt with Republican John McCain's name. Not merely stupid. Very stupid.

"People were upset. But they started saying things, calling me very stupid, telling me my shirt was stupid and I shouldn't be wearing it," Catherine said.

Then it got worse.

"One person told me to go die. It was a lot of dying. A lot of comments about how I should be killed," Catherine said, of the tolerance in Oak Park.

But students weren't the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

"In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain," Catherine said. ...

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

"He said, 'You should be crucifixed.' It was kind of funny because, I was like, don't you mean 'crucified?' " Catherine said.

Other entries in her notebook involved suggestions by classmates that she be "burned with her shirt on" for "being a filthy-rich Republican."

Of course, there were moments with which we visible blue-state right-wingers are all too familiar:

Only a few times did anyone say anything remotely positive about her McCain shirt. One girl pulled her aside in a corner, out of earshot of other students, and whispered, "I really like your shirt."

The next day, Catherine wore a blue-ink "Obama Girl" shirt, and the reaction was unsurprisingly different. Personally, I think the experiment would have been more telling if she'd wore the shirts in reverse order. Odds are that her Obama shirt would have gone largely without remark — support for that candidate being the default for conformity.

A Tyrannical Mindset

Of course, we can't tar a social movement with the acts of a few, but at some point, the volume of incidents bespeaks a mindset. One assaulted immigrant may not suffice. One elderly woman mobbed and forced to watch as her cross is stomped may still fall short. I wonder, though, how many vandalized churches must be added to the list for concerns to be acknowledged as reasonable:

Another church building belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been vandalized. This incident in Sandy is the seventh in a string of vandalisms targeting the Church's chapels.

Churches in Weber and Davis counties were also hit by vandals over the weekend, raising concerns about a possible hate crime. In those incidents, vandals shattered doors and windows.

Or perhaps a blacklist exceeds the threshold. (Am I alone in having viewed campaign finance laws as a protection against corrupt government, not as an opportunity to harass opponents' supporters?)

As I said, a mindset begins to emerge, and it tends to be expressed violently in failure and oppressively in success. Where possible, radical change will be forced upon society by way of judicial legislation; where the people block that route, civil society may be threatened. It's written in the emotional foundation of the cause; if religious or secular traditionalism "is hate," then its practitioners don't deserve a place at the table.

When traditionalists prevail, violent backlash against them is ignored, excused, or mitigated through equivalence. And when the radicals prevail, the movement's first principles dictate that policy treat the opposition as having secondary rights.

The Armies of Tolerance

Clearly, this 67-year-old woman was inciting the peaceful crowd to violence.

Too bad the police weren't there to arrest her! (Video of the aftermath, and the original incident from a different angle here.)

What "Moderate" Means...

... would seem to be precisely what skeptics thought it meant when Ken Block launched his party of that name about a year ago — namely, susceptible to pressure and manipulation. At the time, Block wrote an Engaged Citizen post in which he declared:

All ridiculous culture war issues aside, the time is right now for those who believe that what ails Rhode Island can and should be fixed. There are many disparate groups which have overlapping goals, and the need is critical right now to ignore ideological differences, pool resources and advocate together for specific changes that should be palatable to all. My strong suggestion is to push all out on separation of powers, disallowing one time payouts to be used to balance the budget and disallowing the settling of ethics charges by paying off the Ethics Commission. These ideas have popular appeal and immediate relevance.

The Web site of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island proclaims that the "hot button social topics of our times (abortion, illegal immigration, etc) necessarily must take a legislative back seat while our economy is repaired and the erosion of the tax base reversed." And yet, in an email announcement just released, Block explains that it withdrew its endorsement of Republican David Anderson because some statements that he made in a private email "do not reflect the brand or style of politics that the Moderate Party of RI believes should be practiced."

Well that didn't take long! A local political operative — whose profession and public standing depend on Rhode Island's continuation down its spiral — declares as racism concern about the affirmative action mentality — which is clearly within the realm of "hot button social topics" — and the Moderate Party rushes for distance. That doesn't instill confidence in the organization's dependability when the fight is truly engaged for the soul and well-being of our state.

In a response that Block emailed me when I inquired about the matter before he'd sent out his statement, Ken used the passive voice to avoid acknowledging his apparent alignment with the crowd whose smears he had rewarded with action:

It is unfortunate for David that his private email has gone public in this way. He is a very bright person who has worked hard on his campaign, and who agreed with many of the central tenets that underpin the Moderate Party of RI.

As many have argued, moderation and centrism ought not be taken for a surfeit of principle. The six Republicans whom Block still endorses could give a small indication of their seriousness about building a principled organization to rival the RI establishment by withdrawing their Moderate affiliation.

Admitting What Must Be Done

Even just a hint that Governor Carcieri likes the notion of eliminating the income tax, almost as a philosophical matter, is enough to induce the fury of Johnathan Berard (emphasis added):

As a taxpayer, I'm mad because the state decided to go more than $33 million dollars over budget, but as a student, I'm absolutely furious that the solution to make up some of that loss is to take funding from state schools, necessitating tuition increases. This makes some of us losers on both ends! Part of the reason students like me go to schools like URI, RIC, and CCRI is because of the affordability of the education provided. Now, because of these rate hikes, current students and their families, who have already received their financial aid award packets for the year, are forced to come up with even more money to fund their educations. This is especially tough on families on already restrictive budgets who now have to somehow cough up hundreds or thousands of extra dollars to continue their or their loved one's education. Unfortunately, unlike the executive branch of their state government, when Rhode Island families go over their budgets, they have no one to take funding away from in order to make up for the shortfall.

Following Berard's reasoning in principle ought to lead one to small-government conclusions. Take his thought another step: When citizens face a shortage of income, because they lack jobs, they can't just turn to wealthier neighbors and take the money from them. Instead, they tighten their belts and focus on improving their circumstances for the future.

There are two explanations on the table for the current state of our state's budget. The first, presumably Berard's, is that Rhode Island has been allowing its wealthier citizens to keep too much of their money. The second, the correct option, is that the government is spending money on things that it oughtn't be spending money on — from extravagant worker benefits to an imbalanced welfare industry. Reluctance to admit the second conclusion leads Berard to miss his rhetorical mark in two significant ways.

The first relates to his mistaken inference that the governor would intend to make up the full loss of revenue from the eliminated income tax through sales tax, "assuming that taxpayers will just spend their extra money on retail purchases":

Rhode Island is in a recession, has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and we rank 18th in home foreclosures. Besides that, a great majority of residents' retirement savings are in question due to the volatility on Wall Street and the instability of financial markets. What makes the Governor think that we'd choose to spend that extra income on a new car, iPod, or plasma TV, rather than paying our mortgages, purchasing groceries for our families, or saving for our retirements? Or paying our tuitions?

Note the implication that Rhode Islanders can't pay for mortgages, groceries, retirements, or tuitions as things stand. How then is it moral to take money from their paychecks? No, a shift in the state's method of taxation wouldn't likely be a wash as a matter of revenue, but more of its citizens would have more money in their pockets in order to support their families, save, and invest, whether by investing we mean purchasing stocks, investing in real estate (i.e., a home), or investing in their own educations. If, financially, they need to avoid taxes, they can do so by eliminating consumption.

The second assumes that the working and middle classes won't act out of self interest (ironically, because it is clearly in Berard's self interest to push this line):

What if, instead of gambling that business will take root in Rhode Island by abolishing taxes, Rhode Island instead decides to provide initiatives for and incentives to the students in its higher education system who aspire to help grow the statewide economy? What if, instead of allowing the lower and middle classes to bear a larger percentage of the tax burden, Rhode Island instead provided a way for those same people to increase their level of education, which induces economic growth? Instead of helping to better the lives of Rhode Islanders, though, the actions of the Carcieri administration have simply served as hindrance to our advancement, both financially and educationally.

So, it is a gamble to attract businesses by allowing them (and their employees) to keep more of the money that they make here in Rhode Island, but it is somehow not a gamble to hand cash to students in the hopes that they'll leap from the graduation stage to slay the state's economic demons with their diplomas. That's worse than a gamble; it's unrealistic. Newly credentialed citizens generally lack the resources, the experience, and the tolerance for risk to build businesses from the ground up. Graduates will go where the jobs are, and the jobs are currently more likely to be found anywhere in the United States other than Rhode Island. Any coins that the government plunks into the educational slots, in other words, just fall out the back of the machines.

The difficult reality that many of those who've read Berard's commentary on RI Future are ideologically disposed to deny is that a state so desperately in need of economic expansion must shave off all expenditures that do not serve that single-minded objective. That means paying less to keep the government operating. That means paying less for the education that its towns provide. That means regretfully admitting that those in need of assistance have to look elsewhere.

Because their constituencies rely on it, those on the left emphasize the health of the politcal entity, of the government. At this moment in history, Rhode Island needs to focus on the well-being of its people.

On the Happiness of Conservatives

Something has seemed tellingly erroneous about liberals' declarations of conservatives' desperateness and their premature schadenfreude related to the presumed outcome of the election. Liberals misapprehend something very basic in the conservative philosophy, which, although it varies in form and degree across the right-wing spectrum, is partly definitive. Those perplexed by the partisan or ideological happiness gap are missing the same something:

This year, when things seem so rosy for Democrats, the joy gulch yawns wider than ever. The fraction of very happy Republicans has never been so much larger than the very happy Democrats.

What's the Republicans' secret to feeling groovy?

"They have more money," Paul Taylor, director of the Pew Social & Demographic Trends project, writes in the new report. "They have more friends. They are more religious. They are healthier. They are more likely to be married. They like their communities better. They like their jobs more. They are more satisfied with their family life. They like the weather better." ...

Brooks says a lot hinges on the answer to this question: Do you believe that hard work and perseverance can overcome disadvantages? Conservatives are more likely to say yes.

Pew found that Democrats are more likely to say that success in life is mostly determined by outside forces. Republicans lean toward thinking that success is determined by one's own efforts.

The hypothesis: Those who think they can control their destinies are happier.

The notion of controlling one's destiny begins to go off the mark, because core to conservatism is a material realism. As Peter Robinson describes in a summary of an interview with Thomas Sowell:

He prefers an older way of looking at American politics--a much older way. In his classic 1987 work, A Conflict of Visions, Sowell identifies two competing worldviews, or visions, that have underlain the Western political tradition for centuries.

Sowell calls one worldview the "constrained vision." It sees human nature as flawed or fallen, seeking to make the best of the possibilities that exist within that constraint. The competing worldview, which Sowell terms the "unconstrained vision," instead sees human nature as capable of continual improvement.

You can trace the constrained vision back to Aristotle; the unconstrained vision to Plato. But the neatest illustration of the two visions occurred during the great upheavals of the 18th century, the American and French revolutions.

The American Revolution embodied the constrained vision. "In the United States," Sowell says, "it was assumed from the outset that what you needed to do above all was minimize [the damage that could be done by] the flaws in human nature." The founders did so by composing a constitution of checks and balances. More than two centuries later, their work remains in place.

The French Revolution, by contrast, embodied the unconstrained vision. "In France," Sowell says, "the idea was that if you put the right people in charge--if you had a political Messiah--then problems would just go away." The result? The Terror, Napoleon and so many decades of instability that France finally sorted itself out only when Charles de Gaulle declared the Fifth Republic.

What role have the two visions played in the campaign? Sen. John McCain, who is trailing, has by and large embraced the constrained vision; Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading, the unconstrained vision. Asked if Obama represents the purest expression of the unconstrained vision since Franklin Roosevelt, Sowell, himself an African-American, replies: "No. Since the beginning of American politics. This man [Obama] has been a left ideologue for 20 years."

In the constrained vision, in contemporary politics, there's no such thing as perfectibility, so its implication for mood is to be happy anyway — to do our best. The unconstrained vision, ever chasing impossible structure insists that our work is not done, and it doesn't take much objectivity to see that our work can never be done. The Right sees the world's ebbs and flows and seeks meaning that isn't essentially linked to floods; the Left creates a narrative of progress, ever tangibly near, too often thwarted. One worldview casts setbacks as ultimately temporary and opponents as misguided; to the other, humanity is an ugly crowd that must be led, and saved by any means necessary from those who would repress it.

On a personal note, I can testify that I spent most of my adulthood thus far never long surpassing the positive threshold of any happiness index, and the idea that things beyond my personal control were precisely the things most in need of change has only recently receded. Now, I'd have to pause before telling a pollster whether I'm "very happy" or only "pretty happy." (I'd definitely be in the top group if I could manage to get my finances at least into break-even territory.) Oh, there are various forces that keep us all from achieving everything we desire, and sometimes they manifest in ugliness among our brethren, but our victory is not necessarily their defeat. Indeed, they cannot be defeated in a worldly sense, only ignored.

Not surprisingly, my improved mood in recent years has correlated most closely with my increasingly confident religiosity. My health has remained constant, and if anything, my sense of personal wealth has decreased. The foundation of true happiness may be a sense of progress and chance of success, and then contentment, but progress is never consistent, and success is never assured. What I find conservatism to provide is the promise that, when it comes to life's important answers, we are our ancestors' peers, not an improved iteration of them. What I find Christianity to provide is an understanding that progress needn't be toward worldly goals and a willingness to redefine the measurement of success.

Ah, the Years to Come

The forces of tolerance strike again:

While the Democrat-leaning media continues to scare undecided voters with bedtime stories about some mythical angry McCain supporter whom nobody has seen, here is a real district attorney's complaint documenting an unprovoked assault by an enraged Democrat against a McCain volunteer in midtown Manhattan: "Defendant grabbed the sign [informant] was holding, broke the wood stick that was attached to it, and then struck informant in informant's face thereby causing informant to sustain redness, swelling, and bruising to informant’s face and further causing informant to sustain substantial pain." ...

I followed him down the stairs to the subway until I could get the police and I said, "You're not going to get away with it." And as soon as he saw the police he immediately went calm. He still had the stick in his hand, and you could see the injury on my face, and he admitted it. He was arrested. He actually said, "I don’t know why I did this. It's just those signs, and this election, it has me so upset."

And again:

In a violent display of intolerance, an opponent of Proposition 8 attacked and seriously injured a man who was volunteering on Sunday for the initiative to define marriage as between and a man and a woman.

Prop. 8 supporter, Jose Nunez, 37, was brutally assaulted while waiting to distribute yard signs to other supporters of the initiative after church services at the St. Stanislaus Parish in Modesto.

The assailant grabbed about 75 signs and yelled at Nunez accusingly, "What do you have against gays!" Although Nunez replied that he had nothing against gays, he was attacked anyway. The assailant punched Nunez in the left eye and ran off with the signs.

Nunez, his eye dripping with blood, walked into a building on church grounds where a fellow parishioner called 911. Police and paramedics responded to the scene.

An Obama supporter attacks a woman; a same-sex marriage supporter attacks an immigrant. Stoked to a frenzy with messianic visions and black-and-white certitude of good and evil along political lines, the Left can hardly be expected to calm itself should it grab the levers of power.

The Mainstreaming of Taibbi

Whenever Matt Taibbi's name appears on my computer screen, I pause for a moment to regret that the mainstream has apparently been moving toward him. The first time it happened was in February 2003, when Projo blogger Sheila Lennon gushed over his raw freshness. At the time, I wondered whether it wasn't a bit unseemly for a professional journalist to be so enamored of such a street-sputterer, spewing such epithets as "corpulent Oreo," to describe a black Republican.

Nowadays, Taibbi is apparently a writer for Rolling Stone and being afforded the opportunity to ply his shtick against the likes of Byron York. Here's a sample, following up on York's tempered suggestion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were one key component of the financial meltdown:

I'm saying that you're talking about individual homeowners defaulting. But these massive companies aren't going under because of individual homeowner defaults. They're going under because of the myriad derivatives trades that go on in connection with each piece of debt, whether it be a homeowner loan or a corporate bond. I'm still waiting to hear what your idea is of how these trades work. I'm guessing you've never even heard of them.

I mean really. You honestly think a company like AIG tanks because a bunch of minorities couldn't pay off their mortgages?

The game works — if you're impressed with the same sort of argumentative tactics that the clever kids deployed in high school — because the speaker feigns ignorance (or backs it up with an actual, blithe lack of knowledge) in order to tap dance around arguments that are necessarily subtle. Yes, the various derivatives and swaps constituted a house of cards that, yes, ultimately relied upon the viability of risky mortgages, but yes, what made those mortgages and derivatives attractive to enough investors to make their failure catastrophic was the belief that Fannie and Freddie would mitigate the risk.

Of course, if one's goal is to show off for peers by "proving" an opponent's racism, well, sober assessment of blame really isn't helpful.

No Time to Update the Script

Is it me, or is the news editor of the Providence Phoenix increasingly giving the impression of a strident partisan? To be sure, no doubt previously existed as to Ian's political leanings, but something in this election season seems to be drawing him further across the tightrope spanning the ideological gulf, toward his ticker-tape-talking-point friends. Perhaps I've been too keen to see balance, heretofore, but this post puts a head on the snake (so to speak):

Yet the CRFRI's implication that non-Republicans are to blame for the state of the fight against terrorism seems a bit odd, doesn't it?

A few questions:

Who botched the hunt for Osama bin Laden?
Who allowed the Taliban to come back into power in Afghanistan?

Who has waged an extremely costly and unnecessary war that has failed in its stated goal of transforming the Middle East?

Whose own government says this war has made worse the fight against terrorism?

And who is reportedly ramping up the search for Osama since there's a presidential election in November?

Putting aside my observation that, beyond its name, the College Republican Federation of Rhode Island stated nothing in the materials that Donnis cites to implicate non-Republicans in a way that exonerates various members of the party, what does seem a bit odd to me is that Donnis begins his questioning with reference a "botched" hunt for OBL and ends it faulting the administration's renewed focus on him now that its days in office are coming to a close. It's also worth noting that Donnis's link related to the OBL question is to an article from spring 2002, since which time precious little has been heard from the terrorist mastermind.

Donnis doesn't provide a link for his second question, but I'd submit that this article answers it with "Iran":

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been arming Taliban groups in western Afghanistan for the past year, an independent journalist has told Adnkronos International (AKI).

Question #3 points to a curious — perhaps telling — ambiguity in liberals' thinking: The linked opinion piece addresses the Global War on Terror, with Iraq being merely a stage in that broader war; is Donnis's position that fighting terrorists is "unnecessary"? And apart from that request for clarification, I wonder if Ian would provide his view of a reasonable time frame in which to "transform" an entire region. Should routing terrorists and transforming a broad-based ideo-political culture be roughly equivalent, in time span, to earning a Master's degree? Or is it a project more in the mold of changing a state school's image from "party school" to respected institution?

Chronology is certainly relevant to Donnis's next question, not the least because his supporting link harks back to the pre-surge days of September 2006. Apparently, presidential races are to be run during whatever period serves the liberal candidate best, regardless of whether it happens to be the present.

How Unlike a Normal Young Man Is David Segal?

Oh to have the financial liberty that David Segal makes evident through his priorities (emphasis added):

I can think of nothing that would attract young people to Rhode Island, and keep them around, at a higher rate than expanded transit, and expanded health care -- two services that have suffered the most, under the austerity measures that have been pushed by Chamber of Commerce, the Governor, and far too many characters in the Assembly.

From personal experience, as well as acquaintanceship with various "young people" throughout my thirty-three years, I'd hazard to suggest that those of us who are not full-time part-time legislators are more likely to be attracted to and remain in a place with employment opportunities aplenty than a tax hell with a unionized fleet of public designated drivers. And depending where one draws the line for "young people," I suspect that there isn't an age demographic with less reason to worry about healthcare coverage.

Me, I remained in Rhode Island owing to the gravity of a large traditional family, but inasmuch as Mr. Segal is more ideologue than practical provincialist, I don't imagine he'll be advocating for traditional family values as an economic foundation.

Last Night's Performance

PROEM:

The streaming link wasn't working all day, so having fixed it, I've moved the post back up to the top of the blog. Sorry for the muddleheadedness.

---

Listen as I stun Matt Allen with my confession that I voted for Sheldon Whitehouse, explain our Engaged Citizen, and summarize Bill Felkner's post using that feature — all with the halt-sprint rhythm of one who's spent years typing his thoughts more often than speaking them. Stream by clicking here or download it.

Cold War Divisions to Return?

Not to scuttle all that harmony over dreams of a "working waterfront," but something's too eerie about this not to highlight it:

Launching an invasion while the world news is focused on the Olympics is pretty savy... and a grand first step towards a renewed, major US/Russia confrontation.

Yes, quite a clever fellow, that Putin, with his savvy first step toward the reascension of a leftist counterweight to that otherwise irredeemably vain, shallow, superstitious, greedy U.S. of A. Guess we should all take our usual sides on the escalation of global tensions.

(I'm curious from where Matt took the map. Note that South Ossetia and North Ossetia are the same color — as if to visually imply that Georgia is attempting to break apart a country.)

The Pseudo-Intellectuals' Candidate

Has anybody else gotten the sense that the Obamanation has the interesting effect of highlighting how extensively the zany intellectual clichés from the academic Left are ingrained in the liberal/Democrat movement? Consider Victor Davis Hanson's post aptly titled "Postmodern Architecture":

What was stunning about the NY Times' Bob Herbert's charge that the McCain campaign, in its satire on Obama's messianic sense of self, had deliberately inserted clips of the phallic Leaning Tower of Pisa and Washington Monument to drive home a racist trope about black men and white women was not just his embarrassing ignorance of architecture, or his infantile pop-Freudianism, or even his preemptory efforts to tie all criticism of Obama to racism and thereby stifle dissent. It was the sheer arrogance in the manner in which he persisted in his false points: "An image right there... of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and ... the Washington Monument.... You tell me why those two phallic symbols are placed there...".

Anybody who's sat through a college literature course no doubt recognizes Herbert's over-reliance on Freudian symbolism. (E.g., "His use of the word 'thrust' during the sword-fight scene emphasizes the phallic nature of the sword and raises the question of the white man's primal fear of being sexually compromised by the African American.")

Here's another example:

I think that the writer thought it smart to use the word "biracial" instead of "black" to feed on white male fear of black men taking white women.

I also think that the writer also thought it was brilliant to use the phrase "tiger by the tail" which is very close to the children's rhyme "tiger by the toe" which was originally the not so childish "n***** by the toe".

The blogger goes on, in the comments, to highlight the ostensibly racist letter writer's use of the word "lust," but a more rewarding deep reading can be performed without ripping the word from its succulent context:

Every scientific analysis of news coverage has noted the vastly dissimilar treatment of the two candidates. The media lust to be a part of "making history" by helping elect a biracial candidate. So, in the process, everything from ethics to integrity is chucked over the side. We're gonna make history. But, oh, at what cost?

We can well imagine the orgasmic euphoria with which the headline "Obama Wins!" would be written, and some of us may already harbor the foreboding fear of the governance that may follow it, but when it comes to fantasies, I'd suggest that the dark ones of the White Male are not nearly as significant a factor as the titillated craving for the expiation of guilt by means of submission to the Other from those who see in every tower a phallus and therein an expression of power.

Waiting for the Lightning Flash

Personal stress and strain is always a factor, but I've had a vague sense that dialog is becoming more difficult and the tone of political/ideological debate is becoming more vicious of late. The disclaimer, here, is that I remain deliberately naive; heck, I've been surprised to gather first-hand experience of the extent to which the day-to-day activities of my industry are governed by dishonesty.

An all-too-predictable post by an unsurprising Rhode Island blogger about a certain columnist using his regular space to explore something on his mind other than politics and the comments to that post solidify the impression. (Normally I'd link to the thing regardless, but either you've already seen it, will come across it and recognize it, or really would derive no value from reading it.)

Yeah, I know, bring on the comments about my companionship with vitriol. Accuse me of hypocrisy with respect to honesty. Rant all you want. And in doing so, confirm that, to the extent that national politics bear on the mood, this season will end with a surge of either bitter vexation or haughty triumphalism. (This video is what seems always to come to mind in such circumstances, especially after minute 2:00.)

Progressive Culture Shock

Believe it or not, I'm not a big fan of class warfare. I'm a blue-collar capitalist, after all. I break my back merely to get by, but I'm deeply suspicious of plans to grant the government authority to redistribute income away from those who are more likely to have their backs massaged than strained.

Still, when a behind-the-scenes architect of the progressive Economic Death and Dismemberment Act laments that working stiffs aren't helping to make his commute to work via public transportation more pleasant, it's a bit much to take:

Last week, I was a little startled to get a phone call from my daughter, who is 14. She plays the viola, you see, and is traveling with her high-school orchestra in Europe for ten days this summer, and I'm the kind of 20th-century guy who is surprised by phone calls from Germany.

But it was a happy call, and she reported to me that they were in Berlin, and told me about the Checkpoint Charlie museum (giving me the opportunity to reflect that the Berlin wall, which seemed eternal to me once, came down three years before she was born), and the Fernsehturm, a giant TV tower with a rotating platform from which to view the city. But she also reported that the trains and buses were cool, too. She was thrilled that she and her friends could get wherever they wanted to go -- by themselves. We had a 3-minute call, and probably half of it was about the feeling of independence and how much fun the trains were to use. ...

The problem [in Rhode Island] is that the system is stuck: endlessly starved of resources by a legislature and Governor who don't ever ride the bus themselves and don't see its value. The result: overcrowded and unpleasant riding conditions, schedules so sparse they barely work at all, and unreliable service to boot. The truth is that RIPTA is barely adequate as public transit, and the proof is in the number of cars parked at RIPTA's Elmwood Avenue garage each day -- even the drivers and managers who get a free ride don't take it.

My question for Tom Sgouros: If my wife and I don't have the global mobility that his teenage daughter enjoys, why should we subsidize her vehicular independence back home? If we haven't been able to afford to take a whole week off in two years or to take those sorts of vacations that involve, you know, hotels and stuff for about a decade (since our honeymoon), perhaps it isn't merely the elitism of the governor and the GA that limits the distribution of public finances.

If Mr. Sgouros wishes to transfer more of the state government's current spending toward public transportation and infrastructure, he'll earn my support. But he'll have to explain to his union and other public-dime friends and employers that their largess must be the source of the funds. The rest of us are tapped, and those who need to carry van-loads of tools (rather than laptops and leather briefcases) to work don't derive quite the same cost-benefit analysis.

And if public transportation is such a great deal, by the way, why can't its managers charge enough of a fare to make ends meet without tax dollars? Their doing so might deprive a viola or two of international airfare, but at least Dad wouldn't have to ride to the office on the backs of the proles.

The Sweet Simplicity of Progressivism

If only progressives' plans were always this straightforward:

Statewide Wifi available everywhere to everyone... for free .

And let the cable/telephone companies bid on the right to be the State's sole provider. How would it be paid for? The company winning the bid to provide the service will maintain sole rights to sell advertising space on the statewide network.

So, we take a centralized power with tax and police powers and invest it with the authority to determine the single corporate provider of Internet services in the state, and that provider wouldn't charge a penny because it would reap its rewards by selling advertising targeting its monopolized captive audience. No chance of corruption and ossification there!

Where would the ads appear, again?

It's Settled, Then

Peter Schweizer offers a very interesting read on studies finding that conservatives are happier, friendlier, more charitable, and more likely to hug their children, while liberals are... ahem... otherwise:

Much of the desire to distribute wealth and higher taxation is motivated by envy - the desire to take more from someone else - and bitterness.

The culprit here is not those on the Left who embrace progressive ideas but the ideas themselves.

As John Maynard Keynes reminds us: 'The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and wrong, are more powerful than commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else.' Or, as the American theorist Richard Weaver once declared: 'Ideas have consequences.'

And it seems that today modern progressive ideas can often bring out the worst in people.

This finding resonates with especial strength for those who've sensed its counterintuitive truth:

Most surprising of all is reputable research showing those on the Left are more interested in money than Right-wingers.

Both the World Values Survey and the General Social Survey reveal Left-wingers are more likely to rate 'high income' as an important factor in choosing a job, more likely to say 'after good health, money is the most important thing', and agree with the statement 'there are no right or wrong ways to make money'.

Does anybody know the html for the "evil smile" tag?

Economic Savvy When It Really Matters

Yes, it does seem that leftward politicos do seem to have a better grasp economics when they are directly affected by a policy:

Feinstein, head of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, was forced to deal with reality. "It's cratering," the Washington Post quoted Feinstein as saying [referring to the government-run Senate dining services]. "Candidly, I don’t think the taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn't need to be. There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like businesses."

Yes, yes, go on, Dianne. Run with that thought. Explore it, as the therapists say.

Perhaps you might meditate on the District of Columbia's public school system, which spends roughly $14,000 a pupil in exchange for one of the worst educations in the country. Every year, one of the greatest mysteries in the nation's capital is whether textbooks have been delivered to the right kids, or even to the right schools. It can take until Christmas to get it all worked out. FedEx Corp., meanwhile, can tell you where any of its millions of packages are in more than 100 countries, right now. (Why not just FedEx the textbooks to the kids?)

Or you might ponder the hilarious example of New York's OTB. For most of the last 40 years, these state-run betting parlors have actually lost money. Apparently, the house always wins — except when Uncle Sam is the bookie.

Look wherever you like, it's not as if there's a shortage of examples. And more are on the way.

Jonah Goldberg means the examples are on the way by means of Barack Obama, should he win.

Palatable Decline

It's a small thing, to be sure, but a comment that Ian Donnis made to his own recent post on economic development in Rhode Island points to an increasingly sore spot:

... hopefully the effort to promote "green jobs," which I've written about previously in the Phoenix, will also yield dividends.

It is not my intention to single out Ian — who is among the more reasonable of his ideological species — but here's a radical thought: How about we just try to create jobs, in general? Isn't the horrible state of our state such that we'd be well advised to avoid burdening its economic health with adjectives?

With the fad of "green jobs," echoed in Ian's reference to the Greenhouse Compact from the '80s, it seems that those on the left are less concerned with job creation than making the ideological most of an opportunity to promise any economic development at all — in this case, to leverage the thirst for work in order to promote the Kool Aid of environmentalism. The reason, it seems clear to me, even if it isn't of conscious origin for Leftists, is that they are opposed to taking those steps that would promote a generally business-friendly environment, so they cast their hopes on "inventing" or (more often) "reinventing" the market to suit their preferences.

They do not want to tell the unionists that the state can no longer afford to pay more for their work than it's worth, in market terms, neither do they wish to admit to civic dependents that, well, sorry, but the state of Rhode Island really isn't in the best position to sustain them, just now. So, to make the necessary investments — and allow the necessary reality of "high-paying jobs" — palatable, they insert that immunizing adjective: "green." They allow themselves to believe that, with just the right mix of incentives, a government-driven industry will materialize that provides high-paying union jobs, while filling the government's coffers with redistributable revenue, all with the ecological boon of saving Mother Nature from the ravages of mankind's selfishness.

I hate to go all capitalist populist on y'all, but it seems to me that anybody who's currently struggling to stay working in a state and at a time of shrinking employment probably doesn't care much for any green but the hue of cash. High paying, low paying, most of them probably agree with me that the time to embark upon "a strategic repositioning of the local economy," in Ian's words, is when things are going well. Not when people are watching as the local economy drains their lives of everything that they've worked so hard to build.

Engaged Citizens and In-Group Activists

As commenter Will noted in response to Marc's post, Matt Jerzyk thought it worth pointing out something that surely we all noticed (indeed, on which we three mused when the photographer told us that he'd be shooting the RI Future gang the following night): that the Phoenix photos buck left/right stereotypes. In that quality, however, they do no more than express reality.

Ian elides a significant difference, I think, in his statement that we who founded AR "were motivated by a similar desire [to Jerzyk's] to provide a broader and more consequential forum for [our] ideas and philosophy." Here's RI Future's nutshell catalyst:

Matt Jerzyk launched his Rhode Island's Future blog in January 2005 because, after having worked locally in community- and union-organizing, "I saw first-hand how difficult it was to penetrate the media cabal with progressive stories of hope and change."

Here's what I told Ian:

At some point in late 2003 Andrew emailed me with the suggestion of a group blog. Around that time, he was writing periodically for TechCentralStation, and I was doing the same with National Review Online. The idea lost steam at that time, but a year later, an increasing sense that things were seriously awry in our state led us to take another look at the notion.

On one side, a local activist and unionist sees blogging as a way to sell "progressive stories." On the other side, a few opinion scribblers think there are important points to be made about local matters. Piecing together one blog is a law-school student; piecing together the other is a carpenter.

It would push real life a bit far toward fiction to make too much of this point, but the stereotype that the Left has found useful in a rebellious age is undermined by more than sweaters versus suit jackets.

(N.B. — For the record, I do not wish, with this post, to scuttle our little burst of comity, even if the Phoenix did give RI Future a color table-of-contents picture in the print edition. Bitter? I'm praying and polishing my gun even as I type.)

Don't Pie Me, Bro!

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman joins the list of pundits to face the confectionary firing squad:

Friedman ducked, and was left with only minor streams of the sugary green goo on his black pants and turtleneck.

He stood in bewilderment and mild disgust as the young man and woman bolted from the stage and out the side door, throwing a handful of fliers into the air to relay the message they apparently were not going to deliver personally.

"Thomas Friedman deserves a pie in the face...," the flier said, "because of his sickeningly cheery applaud for free market capitalism's conquest of the planet, for telling the world that the free market and techno fixes can save us from climate change. From carbon trading to biofuels, these distractions are dangerous in and of themselves, while encouraging inaction with respect to the true problems at hand..."

RIFuture found the video on YouTube. It only took Friedman about 40 seconds to recover enough to begin making light of the attack. Me, I think speakers not towing the radical-left line on university campuses should begin carrying Tasers. Now there's a YouTube video that I'd like to see.

Poison in the Blogosphere and an Ailing Canary in Rhode Island

Every couple of years, it seems, a student from Brown will contact me for comment in an article about blogging for the Brown Daily Herald. It's traditionally been a unifying topic: although we've got different emphases, we Rhode Island bloggers will all agree about the value and opportunities that the medium offers, not the least because it sets the stage for open public discussion of important matters.

This time around, the reporter's final question, yesterday, was whether I had any response to Pat Crowley's assertion to her that we at Anchor Rising are fascists.

What a shame the Rhode Island Left has allowed that guy such a visible place in the local public discourse. More's the shame that nobody on their side will denounce him. And the biggest shame of all is that he comes to us courtesy of our state's teachers.

The Line Starts on the Left

I have to admit that I've been unfair to National Education Association Rhode Island Assistant Director Patrick Crowley. From time to time I've wondered whether I've played some small role in reducing his undeserved credibility, but now I see that my efforts toward that goal are hardly measurable in comparison to his own.

I'm sure all of those ostensibly reasonable folks on the Rhode Island left who've chided me for unfair and unproductive dialog (most often not of my authorship) are preparing their statements of dismay even as I type. Mr. Walsh? Mr. Sgouros? Mr. Schmeling?

Remember, folks, this man has a significant role in our public education system.

A Further Thought

But let's not lose sight of a principle that looms pretty large in conservative philosophy: that social pressure is often the appropriate means of guiding individuals toward behavior that is healthy for society. This concept puts conservatives at the obvious political disadvantage of giving liberals cover to declare that they judge nothing but judgement and untruth (which is a lie), while conservatives must have the courage of their convictions and step forward in the face of error, even when doing so is difficult and involves skirting tricky lines and making one's self a target (which, by the way, arguably reinforces the healthy social pressure on the pressurer).

Popular interpretation of Jesus' admonition about being the first to cast stones has, I think, treated the stones as too broad a metaphor. In specific, they were instruments of execution. To treat them as representative of mere disapproval ignores the fact that Jesus' instruction to the woman was to go forth and sin no more, which required that she knew what was sinful, which required that her culture informed her.

Will it hurt a child, one day, to read judgemental language on the Internet regarding his parents and the circumstances of his childhood? Probably. But much more profound was the harm to the child done by those who determined the circumstances. Worse is the harm to victims of the legitimization of irresponsible behavior.

The Damage of Cheap Political Points

Providence Journal photographer Kathy Borchers (and her editor) lobbed a softball out there to accompany Steve Peoples's predictable coverage of the other night's State House events (PDF), and Matt Jerzyk hammered it into the ground:

In one corner we have MEN IN SUITS who are longtime advocates for lowering taxes on the richest millionaires and corporate tycoons at the expense of health care and child care!

In the other corner we have WOMEN & CHILDREN who desperately want to save a program that helps poor kids have equal opportunities for early childhood development.

What's irksome about such unimaginative political gamesmanship is how oblivious the speakers generally are of the consequences of their own rhetoric. To adopt the metaphor, disadvantaged children would be much better off if their own fathers were, themselves, to become "MEN IN SUITS" — responsible, hard-working citizens. (And it isn't at all unlikely that some of the pictured women are married to "MEN IN SUITS," thus enabling their participation in a midday rally.) Jerzyk has contributed to the hackneyed cliché vilifying such men, who are never portrayed with the dignity of standing up for the survival of their businesses (and the families, both their own and employees', thereby supported), but always as scraping with greedy fingers at the world's good deeds. Their efforts to decrease public handouts are never treated as if there's any counterbalance from their efforts to increase general prosperity such that others can earn what is not given.

The aggregate image thereby created provides a powerful rationalization for those eager to chase their natural libidicism down the path that leads away from their familial responsibilities. No less are women given license not to join the forces of supposed commercial evil or to encourage men toward it. Sadly, righteous leftward purity can often come at the taxpayer's expense.

When one considers that Jerzyk titled his post not "Men v. Women & Kids," but "Daddy v. Mommy & the Kids," his boilerplate propagandizing moves from troublesome to despicable. Hesitance to question whether progressive family-destructive efforts are deliberate begins to evaporate when the professional (MEN IN SUITS) advocates drive such wedges into the culture.

Another Winter of Discontent

Perchance I wasn't alone among readers of Saturday's Projo opinion pages in recalling Mac's piece on NRO back in 2004:

In fact, the entire Winter Soldiers Investigation was a lie. It was inspired by Mark Lane's 1970 book entitled Conversations with Americans, which claimed to recount atrocity stories by Vietnam veterans. This book was panned by James Reston Jr. and Neil Sheehan, not exactly known as supporters of the Vietnam War. Sheehan in particular demonstrated that many of Lane's "eye witnesses" either had never served in Vietnam or had not done so in the capacity they claimed.

Nonetheless, Sen. Mark Hatfield inserted the transcript of the Winter Soldier testimonies into the Congressional Record and asked the Commandant of the Marine Corps to investigate the war crimes allegedly committed by Marines. When the Naval Investigative Service attempted to interview the so-called witnesses, most refused to cooperate, even after assurances that they would not be questioned about atrocities they may have committed personally. Those that did cooperate never provided details of actual crimes to investigators. The NIS also discovered that some of the most grisly testimony was given by fake witnesses who had appropriated the names of real Vietnam veterans. Guenter Lewy tells the entire study in his book, America in Vietnam.

What brought that to mind, of course, was an op-ed by a couple of Brown professors:

LAST WEEKEND, we joined hundreds of young veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan gathered near Washington, D.C., for the Winter Soldier Hearings: Iraq and Afghanistan. In a packed conference auditorium, under the glare of lights and the cameras of the BBC and other international and national media, former and active-duty troops brought the day-to-day reality of the war home to hundreds of people attending this historic event. They gave eyewitness accounts of what they saw and did with their units during the invasion and war whose fifth anniversary is upon us, as well as in the now six-year-old occupation of Afghanistan.

After decades of pining, the American Left is now full-boar reviving the '60s era, although they haven't gone quite so far as accusing our boys in the military of regular gang rapes of civilians. Still, those offering testimony do provide a veritable banquet for anybody drooling to undermine America's efforts overseas:

The veterans told of:

• U.S. troops raiding home after home after home in which no insurgent activity or evidence was found, terrorizing the families inside.

• U.S. troops kicking, butt stroking and clothes-lining Iraqi prisoners of war, whom they were told to always call “detainees” so that Geneva Conventions did not apply.

• U.S. troops spraying machine-gun fire into homes after hearing a single shot from somewhere in a village.

• U.S. troops throwing urine-filled bottles and feces-packed food at people walking along the side of the road.

• U.S. troops shooting farmers working in their fields at night (to take advantage of the erratic electricity to run their irrigation systems) simply because they were out after a U.S.-mandated curfew.

• U.S. troops commanded not to stop for pedestrians, and instead to run over anyone or anything in the road as their convoys roar down highways;

• U.S. troops commanded to destroy boxes containing entire archives of birth certificates of the people of Fallujah, after a U.S. scorched-earth campaign in that city in 2004.

... they emphatically declared in their testimony that crimes against the people of Iraq at the hands of the U.S. armed forces were not isolated incidents of pent-up resentment or a matter of a few bad apples spoiling an otherwise healthy barrel.

The acts were habitual, repeated and officially promoted or condoned.

The authors/anthropology professors, Catherine Lutz and Matthew Gutmann, suggest that we American citizens must "demand more honest media coverage of the war." Odd, then, that they cite Iraqi survey data from 2007, instead of the just-released, and much improved (from American's perspective) 2008 iteration (PDF). Funny that, with the 2007 data apparently before them, they refer generally to an "overwhelming majority of Iraqis [who] want the U.S. to leave the country, and to do so immediately," even though that 47% of respondents were outnumbered by the combined 53% who answered with some form of "remain until..." (a total that is now 63%).

That observation leads to others that bring into question the objectivity of the survey itself, which is annually sponsored by international media organizations. New this year was a question about credit and blame for improvements or lack thereof in security. Those who answered that security had improved were given the following parties on which to lavish credit:

• Iraqi Army (13%)
• Iraqi Police (18%)
• Muqtada Al-Sadr (5%)
• Awakening Councils (8%)
• Iraqi Government (26%)
• Other (30%)

While those who'd stated that things had worsened could allocate blame to the following:

• US forces operations (20%)
• Militias (13%)
• Al Qaeda (9%)
• Neighboring countries (6%)
• Politicians/political groups (11%)
• Iraqi Government (9%)
• Parties and their militias (18%)
• Other (18%)

What a respondent answered if he blamed al Qaeda militias affiliated with political groups and sponsored by neighboring countries is anybody's guess, but clearly only a small minority of the minority (26%) who said that the security situation had become worse blame the United States.

And on and on the thread of tweaks goes, leaving one in little doubt as to how a neo cultural revolution can be built upon air... and some fond memories.

Knotting Some Public/Private Threads

One can hear, in the expected quarters, the admonition that Eliot Spitzer's $80,000 whoring habit is a private matter. I wonder how many who'd make that argument also see David Richardson's travails in Providence — where he recently requested proof of the citizenship status of an Hispanic customer to his store — as private.

I imagine that a sizable number of them would insist that Richardson's act, as a manifestation of racism, was a blight on our society and has repercussions beyond the individuals involved. But then, I'd say the same of adultery and prostitution.

Perhaps they'd take the tack that his business transactions are a public matter. But then a prostitute's business transactions would be the same, and a marriage is even more explicitly so.

The circumstances are different, of course, one involving an elected official and the other a store owner, but I don't see anywhere to draw a line between the two that makes one act private and the other public.

The Northeast Conservative Gripe

The bout of grousing that Eliot Spitzer's solicitous troubles inspired from John Derbyshire sounds all too familiar. Here are the final paragraphs, which hit the page like a fist on the desk:

All the TV talking heads are telling me, with their sternest let-him-who-is-without-sin faces on, that it would be wrong, wrong to poke fun at Spitzer, to kick him when he's down, to press for his resignation. We should reserve judgment, they tell me. We should think about his family, they tell me. It's a victimless crime, after all, they tell me.

Well, I and my family have been living for 15 months in the state this guy presides over. We've been paying the taxes and premiums, seething in the traffic jams, watching the U-Hauls heading west, dealing with surly, feather-bedded state employees. What I say to the talking heads is: The hell with all that. And what I say to Eliot Spitzer is what Oliver Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament: "Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

Correcting a Misconception About We Right Wingahs

Come an idle Saturday night ("idle" being a very relative adjective in my case), our referral logs led me to a September post by URI professor Michael Vocino, in which Professor V. voices some misconceptions about Anchor Rising, specifically, and conservatives in general. The minor one, first:

If you go to the spokespeople for the RI Right Wing at Anchor Rising, you can see that the fight against education and social services for middle and lower class RIslanders is in full swing.

I'm pretty sure that by law (or bylaw, as the case may be) left wingers must refer to us as the "self-proclaimed spokespeople for the RI Right Wing." We lost the "broadly proclaimed spokespeople" title the other night when Matt Allen beat Andrew in the thumb-wrestling competition at our local VRWC meeting. I am, however, plotting a route of reclamation that depends upon the title's passing from Matt to Bill Felkner to Will Ricci, whom I believe Monique will be able to defeat in a game of Connect Four come August. I'll keep y'all posted as to our progress.

More seriously, Vocino probably isn't alone in having this incorrect impression (emphasis added):

Unfortunately the pundits at Anchor Rising fail to make the obvious connection that RI Republicans are out of touch with the people of RI AND that could be the reason they can't elect anyone and the reason even those Republicans elected are jumping ship.

RIslanders WANT a state-supplied health care system, they want a state-supplied education system, they want all those services that are their right to expect from their governments, EVEN IF IT MEANS higher taxes.

Some would make the case that Rhode Islanders are more conservative in certain respects than their Democrat leanings lead us to believe. My own assessment is that such conservatism as exists in Rhode Island is too often roped into the Democrat coalition via patronage and unionism. A strong argument could also be made that the RI Republicans are (although less so, these days) "out of touch" with RI conservatives, which compounds the problems at the voting booth.

Be that as it may, it simply isn't true that we AR pundits lack understanding of Rhode Islanders' actual leanings. When it comes to such things as Vocino's preferred socialism, however, we believe that Rhode Islanders who back such an approach are wrong, and that they will learn of their error only through painful experience with its consequences. We see the junkies' dependency, and we argue against it. Unless those with affection for the status quo begin to peel away from the coalition, they are going to suffer from a collapse in which they, themselves, are complicit.

Which concept (complicity) brings us back to Vocino, and his closing question:

What kind of system or man wants to make a profit out of lending money to others who want to go on to college?

Well, it's certainly a question worth contemplating professor.

Facing Reality on RI Poverty

The point's a little bit of a tangent from poverty advocates' request for more workers to make food stamps easier to claim and disperse (which always raises questions about the responsibility of the government to promote its handouts), but this closing quotation illuminates one of the indistinct areas in which liberals and conservatives move toward different solutions:

"The governor is not facing reality. We have a major hunger problem in Rhode Island" and the state is not serving enough people, [Henry Shelton, director of the George A. Wiley Center,] said.

Liberals look at increasing numbers of "hungry" Rhode Islanders and say "make it not so," meaning "give them food." This being an endemic problem, not a temporary crisis in food production, one must also offer suggestions for solving the underlying issue of poverty, and the liberal solution is, again, "make it not so," meaning "give them money," whether that directive takes the form of direct welfare payments, supplemental resources to increase the ease of working or the earnings that may be treated as discretionary income, government jobs, union organization to muscle for jobs, or legislated minimum wages and benefits.

The problem is that, eventually, the society finds itself saying "make it not so" to an avalanche in progress. Dependency becomes a habit, rather than an uncomfortable temporary necessity. Those inclined toward it will migrate in search of it. Those overburdened in its provision will migrate away. Meanwhile, the system's demands drive away businesses and generally drag the society down. The question avoided via imperative at the beginning was "what's the best way to make it not so given our circumstances," and that question quickly transforms into "how can we continue to afford this?"

Rhode Island no longer has the resources to deal with the increasing demand. That is the reality that we must face, and denying it will only increase the amount of need. Those who do the work of angels for the poor certainly have admirable priorities, but at least in degree, those priorities are shared by too few of their fellow citizens. Keep requiring, by government fiat, that average citizens contribute more than they believe reasonable, and they'll continue to leave, even as those whom the policies benefit continue to arrive.

The conservative would suggest that Rhode Island should fortify itself first. As aesthetically unpleasing and morally uncomfortable as it may be, we must get our house in order before we invite others in. That will mean giving the needy incentive to seek out states with the resources to address their needs. It will mean making the state an attractive place to live and do business for those who already have some advantages and wish to build more. Then let those in need return for the opportunity to climb, not to tread water.

I do not believe, as I may be accused of believing, that success proves value. Rather, I believe that people, as a matter of human nature, will work much more assiduously toward their own success than toward the subsidization of others' subsistence, and that they are therefore more advisably treated as an engine than a pool.

Thus, presented the prison of poverty and disadvantage, the liberal seeks to adorn the cell with such things as will make it more tolerable until freedom arrives, while the conservative wishes merely to open the door and make the society outside more apparently worth joining.

Terrorism on the Political Spectrum

There go those fascist terrorists again:

Three seven-figure dream homes went up in flames early yesterday in a Seattle suburb, apparently set by eco-terrorists who left a sign mocking the builders' claims that the 4,000-plus-square-foot houses were environmentally friendly.

The sign - a sheet marked with spray paint - bore the initials ELF, for Earth Liberation Front, a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s.

(Yes, my opening line can be taken as evidence that I'm currently reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.)

Ward: "Whether Walsh likes it or not, the party is coming to an end."

Both Justin and I mentioned NEA President Bob Walsh's rather intemperate anti-business comments last week:

"We are never going to compete with folks, with employers who are so ridiculous they do not provide retirement security plans for their employees....If they don’t, they are terrible people and they shouldn’t be allowed to exist and that’s always going to be the union position on those issues.” ~ Bob Walsh

Tom Ward, publisher of the Valley Breeze (h/t Dan Yorke), is similarly unimpressed.

If Walsh's comments are a true reflection of what small business and honest taxpayers are up against, we should all sell our businesses to others and leave. Really. Obviously, Walsh wouldn't mind if we left - or died. Saturday's story centered around Rhode Island's overly generous pension system, showing how our state pays far more to retirees than other New England states. How, for instance, a 55-year-old Rhode Island retiree with 30 years of service, having earned $57,000 per year at retirement, would receive $37,620 per year - with annual raises for life - in his retirement. The same Vermont retiree would receive $24,966. Over the normal lifetime of the two retirees, the Rhode Islander would be paid almost $1 million more than his counterpart in Vermont.

Walsh doesn't like the reform talk, and seems to harbor some lingering bitterness over the state pension reforms put in place a few years ago that already save taxpayers millions each year....

Let me explain something to you, Mr. Walsh. You only have money for the rich pensions because you and your friends in the General Assembly have been given the power to confiscate our money. You don't earn anything. You don't create any wealth. You just take what you need, and when you come up short - like now - you just try to take more. In polite company, it's called "taxation," but you and I know it's just greed.

I and my hard-working employees, on the other hand, have to go out and earn our customers' money every day. And our customers have to go out and earn their customers money every day. When we fail, we go out of business. No pension. No safety net. We don't get to confiscate anybody's money to keep our sorry boat afloat. You can - and do.

All across Rhode Island, business is suffering today. We are the wealth creators, working long hours and risking it all to run a business against all the obstacles you and your friends place in our way. If we eventually succumb to the state's jack-booted thuggery, we stop filling your wallets. Get it? We don't succeed with you. We succeed despite you.

And despite having our state leaders picking our pockets with new fees and taxes at every turn, many of us provide the 401 (k) pension plans we can afford for our employees. For that, you call us "terrible people." What a disgraceful comment, Mr. Walsh.

Ward also gives an example on par with the example I gave regarding former Providence Administrator John Simmons' pending pension.

A few years ago, Macera was Woonsocket's assistant superintendent, earning on average $103,000 per year for her final three years of service in that post. Three years ago, she was promoted to superintendent. Upon her promotion, she called for the elimination of the assistant superintendent's post, asking the School Committee to fold those duties into her own and asking for a much larger compensation. The School Committee agreed, and in the past three years, Macera earned $152,900 in year 1, $162,900 in year 2, and now earns $172,900 this year.

In Rhode Island, a pensioner like Macera, with more than 35 years service, receives 80 percent of their highest three years' pay.

Union leaders like Walsh keep complaining that we just don't understand; that pensioners have to pay into the system. In fact, he's correct and Macera and others pay 9.5 percent of their pay into the pension system.

Was it a good investment for her? You decide.

Had Macera retired as assistant superintendent three years ago with a top three-year average pay of $103,000, she would have a pension of $82,400 per year.

Instead, she took the promotion and worked for a new three-year average wage of about $163,000. Her annual pension now? $130,320. For those of you without a nearby calculator, that's $2,506 per week. Oh yeah, she gets a 3 percent raise (about $75 per week) every year, too.

If you do the math, you'll learn that as superintendent Macera paid an extra $17,100 into the state pension system in her final three years. Her return? An extra $48,000 per year in her pension. She'll have all her money back in four months. Should she live 20 years she'll take away more than one million extra dollars for her $17,000 investment.

The Business of Business Is... Healthcare?

As disappointing as it is that Ian Donnis would write approvingly of something spat onto the public square by the NEA's Patrick Crowley, it's more disappointing that he seems to agree:

Pat Crowley has a strong post up at RI's Future, pointing to a state report to indicate how Rhode Island taxpayers are paying more than $5 million (plus about $6M from the feds) to pay for health insurance for workers at some of the state's biggest and more profitable corporations

Yeah, it's a nice bit of spin disguised as presumption for those who share the view of Crowley's boss, Bob Walsh, that employers who don't provide public-union-like benefits to employees "are terrible people [who] shouldn’t be allowed to exist." In that view, many employers provide health insurance (often with a you-pay-for-it caveat) to their workers, so it must be considered a moral obligation. That obligation being presumed to be universally acknowledged, the progressives acquire the suspicion that, somewhere along the hierarchy, the companies let themselves off the hook with an assuagement of guilt that the public will pick up the slack. Hence the bizarre characterization of the process as "corporate welfare."

The obvious question, in response to the moralists' insinuations is what we should do about the problem, and one can imagine their answer being to make the employers provide health coverage. That would be the logical reaction to our discovery of such injurious behavior.

So what would be the consequence of government dictation of minimum benefits for employees? Will employers just throw up their hands — "fellas, they got us" — and take the financial blow? No. They'll attempt to make up the expense elsewhere. Perhaps they'll attempt to levy a sort of third-party tax on customers, passing on the cost of government mandates to them. Perhaps they'll lower salaries or lay people off. And if the cost of doing business in Rhode Island becomes too high, if customers will not accept increased costs, or if employees cannot be attracted with lower salaries (but higher benefits), then the businesses will close down or leave.

I wonder, were that to happen, whether progressives would then declare the various public costs of supporting the unemployed to be corporate welfare "going to" (Crowley's words) the companies that no longer employ the money's actual recipients.

The truly disheartening realization is that Donnis, whom I take to be somewhat representative of honorable and well-intentioned progressives in the state, apparently fails to make the connection between this very approach to issues facing the public and the state's problems, which he readily acknowledges:

While I'd like to claim credit for coining the subject line in this post ["Rhode Island and Sisyphus Plantations"], that honor goes to URI professor of economics Len Lardaro, who uses it to describe the Ocean State's seemingly perpetual budget problems. ...

Lardaro believes that voter dissatisfaction will bring a number of new lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, into office this year, and that that will have a salutary effect.

We'll have to wait to see if the professor is right. In the interim, state officials will have to keep rolling budget deficits up the proverbial hill.

Everybody understands (if they don't have a financial or ideological reason not to) that Rhode Island needs to improve its business environment. But that term doesn't just include tax rates. It isn't limited to infrastructure, roads, location, schools, real estate costs, and so on. It also involves the likelihood that a region's culture will lead it to push the government past its bounds in regulating corporations. There's a reason that only two insurance companies operate in Rhode Island. There's a reason healthcare expenses are so high. And there is a multiplicity of reasons that businesses choose not to operate in our state, making it difficult for Rhode Islanders to find work, let alone jobs with stellar benefits.

Not a One on the Island

I managed to restrain myself and hold on to a Christmas gift card to Barnes & Noble until Wednesday in order to put it toward the purchase of Jonah Goldberg's new book. (As readers know, I was otherwise occupied on Tuesday evening, which is when the book was officially released.) Liberal Fascism was nowhere to be found in the Middletown store; I even walked around and looked in possible places of giggly liberal concealment — historical fiction, fantasy, comedy. Having no success, I inquired at the customer service desk, and the woman behind the counter informed me that the store had not received a single copy.

Did I order one? Well, no. If I have to do that, why would I care to do so at a corporate storefront rather than choose either a small shop or an online source to which I'd prefer that my money went?

Imbalanced, On Balance

Alex Merchant got a picture and story in the Providence Journal for convincing the faculty at St. George's School in Middletown — of whom "most... consider themselves liberal" — to let him and other members of the Young Liberals organization skip class to drive up to New Hampshire and volunteer with the Obama campaign. Wouldn't it have been an amazing learning experience for the faculty to run with the idea and bring up some conservative students to work with a Republican campaign?

Ah, well. With no images to compensate from the high school level, herewith some RI College Republicans on the road for Mitt Romney:

Perhaps the College Republicans should offer outreach for younger kids.

ADDENDUM:

Sarah Highland's posted a write-up of the College Republicans' trip. (She's the one on the right, by the way.)

Conservatives Develop Liberals' Havens

From time to time, we'll discuss among ourselves a theory that certain shifts in states' political character are the results of liberals' fleeing from regions that they've ruined to regions in which conservative policies have (ahem) done precisely what one would expect them to do. As Froma Harrop recently discovered, New Hampshire is exhibit A:

The question again: Do recent elections here reflect temporary choler at the Republican leadership or a more fundamental shift? The changing demographics don't bode well for the Grand Old Party.

"There used to be places that would vote Republican no matter how bad a year it was," Scala said. "Nowadays, those reserves are really depleted."

Many of the old-time Yankees — the "genealogical Republicans" — are dying off. They are being replaced by fairly liberal retirees from other states. New Hampshire has long attracted blue-collar Republicans, angry over taxes, from Massachusetts. But they are now being outnumbered by an influx of more educated, politically progressive workers to the state's booming high-tech industries.

The trick, I guess, is to figure out what region conservatives will pick for improvement next. Sadly, I doubt that they'll consider Rhode Island to be ripe, which is unfortunate: the state would make for a fantastic proof of concept field.

Romney Speech: The Public Square Cannot Be Naked

The Corner provides excerpts from Mitt Romney's speech today, which suggest it will focus on the broader strategic question of what role religion should play in the American public square instead of the granularity of Mormon theology:

There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. In John Adam's words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone…

When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States…

There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths…

It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter – on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty…

These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. I saw my parents provide compassionate care to others, in personal ways to people nearby, and in just as consequential ways in leading national volunteer movements…

My faith is grounded on these truths. You can witness them in Ann and my marriage and in our family. We are a long way from perfect and we have surely stumbled along the way, but our aspirations, our values, are the self -same as those from the other faiths that stand upon this common foundation. And these convictions will indeed inform my presidency...

The diversity of our cultural expression, and the vibrancy of our religious dialogue, has kept America in the forefront of civilized nations even as others regard religious freedom as something to be destroyed.

In such a world, we can be deeply thankful that we live in a land where reason and religion are friends and allies in the cause of liberty, joined against the evils and dangers of the day. And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion - rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith.

The Mormon tradition has some serious theological differences with Catholic and Protestant traditions. Yet, there are also theological differences which exist between Roman Catholicism and Protestant traditions, Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox traditions, Pentecostal and main line Protestant traditions, Evangelical and main line Protestant traditions, Christianity and Judaism, as well as Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed traditions of Judaism. We can argue about theological particulars but I haven't found that to be interesting since college days when we debated all sorts of topics. And even then, those debates were often inconclusive or unproductive.

But the issue regarding what is the proper role of religion in the American public square - including how it informs the way we live together as a nation, a community, and a family - is a most important debate. That debate requires a certain moral seriousness, which can exist across differing religious traditions. It further requires us to take a serious look again at the principles of our Founding, which affirm that we are born with our rights which come from the Creator and "the laws of nature of and of nature's God," not the government. And, as the Founders stated, morality cannot be sustained without religious influence.

It is a debate which has not been conducted openly and honestly in recent times, as noted in the earlier Anchor Rising posts highlighted in the Extended Entry below.

If Romney's speech reignites a public debate on what should fill our public square, he has then made an important contribution to our civic discourse.

ADDENDUM:

The text of Romney's speech is here. The video is here.

Here are some of the subsequent commentaries -

Kathryn Jean Lopez
Mona Charen
Byron York
Byron York
Kate O'Beirne
Ramesh Ponnuru
Jonah Goldberg
Mark Levin
Captain's Quarter
South Carolina Republican Party leadership
Power Line
Examiner editorial
Lee Harris
Ed Cone
John Podhoretz
Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume
Evangelical leaders on Hannity & Colmes
Wall Street Journal
Boston Globe
Peggy Noonan
John Dickerson
Michael Gerson
Pat Buchanan
David Kuo
Rich Lowry
Charles Krauthammer
David Kusnet
Kathleen Parker
Jay Cost
E.J. Dionne
David Brooks
Dick Morris
Eleanor Clift
Liz Mair
Jonah Goldberg
Jason Lee Steorts
National Review editors
An NRO symposium
Kathryn Jean Lopez
Bill Bennett
David Frum
The Anchoress
Jimmy Akin
International Herald Tribune
Steve Chapman
Robert Robb
Terry Eastland
Richard John Neuhaus

Along with the American Founders, Romney strongly affirms the role of religion at the creation and through the history of this constitutional order...

...Those familiar with the discussion of these questions might say that the entirety of Romney’s address is an exercise in "civil religion." That is closer to the truth of the matter. Civil religion is not another religion but is a mix of convictions about transcendent truths that are held in common and refracted through the particular religious traditions to which Americans adhere...

...His understanding that the naked public square is not neutral toward religion but is a project of the quasi-religion of secularism is entirely on target. His sharp contrast between America and a secularistic Europe, on the one hand, and jihadist fanaticism, on the other, is well stated.

It is too much to say, as he did, that Americans "share a common creed of moral convictions." It is not a creed, just as America is not a church, but there is an undeniably Judeo-Christian moral ambiance within which we engage and dispute how we ought to order our life together. And, however much we may argue over particulars, Mr. Romney is surely right in saying that "no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people."...

...He was making a bid for the support of people who find themselves on one side of a culture war that they did not declare. If you wonder who did declare the war, you need go no further than the facing page of the Times on the same day, with its typically strident editorial attacking Mr. Romney and his argument about religion in American public life...

...I believe Mr. Romney has rendered a significant service in advancing the understanding of religion and public life in the American experiment...

EXTENDED ENTRY:

Liberal Fundamentalism, Revisited

In the above post, the following Wall Street Journal editorial is referenced:

We have been following the extensive theological commentary in the press on the subject of politics and religion in the current presidential campaign. It might not otherwise have occurred to us that so many editorialists and columnists harbored so many deep, pent-up opinions on religious worship, voluntary school prayer or Christian fundamentalism.

What we have been looking for but have so far missed in this great awakening of religious writing is a short sermon on the subject of liberal fundamentalism...we would like to offer a few thoughts on what has been far and away the most messianic religion in America the past two decades - liberal politics.

American liberalism has traditionally derived much of its energy from a volatile mixture of emotion and moral superiority. The liberal belief that one's policies would on balance accomplish something indisputably good generally made opposing arguments about shortcomings, costs or unintended consequences unpersuasive...

In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals...many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public policy issue that has come along in the past 15 years. The result has been liberal fundamentalism.

...Not surprisingly, this evangelical liberalism produced a response. Conservative groups - both secular and religious - were created, and they quite obviously made the political success of their adversaries more difficult. Liberals don't like that. So now, suddenly, we find all these politicians and columnists who are afraid someone might want to impose a particular point of view on them...

If some liberals are now afraid that certain Christian fundamentalists will reintroduce new forms of intolerance and excessive religious zeal into American political life, perhaps we should concede the possibility that they know what they're talking about. But they might also meditate on the current election and why there has been an apparent rightward shift in political sentiment in the U.S. It could be that a great many voters have taken a good look at the fundamentalists on the religious right and the fundamentalists on the political left and made up their minds about which poses the greater threat to their own private and public values.

(Note: The WSJ wrote those words...in 1984.)

Thomas Krannawitter adds these thoughts:

...natural law jurisprudence represents the greatest threat to the liberal desire to replace limited, constitutional government with a regulatory-welfare state of unlimited powers.

...the principle that our rights come not from government but from a "Creator" and "the laws of nature and of nature's God," as our Declaration of Independence says, and that the purpose and power of government should therefore be limited to protecting our natural, God-given rights.

The left understands that if it is to succeed, these principles of constitutional government must be jettisoned, or at least redefined...the founders' natural-law defense of constitutional government is fatal to liberalism's goal...

From a liberal view, liberty cannot be a natural right, protected by a government of limited powers, because there are no natural rights...Instead, 'the state...is the creator of liberty...

The size, scope and purposes of our government are no longer anchored in and limited by our Constitution...The American people need to be reminded of the source of their rights and persuaded that limited government is good; that the principles of the Constitution - which are the natural-law principles of the Declaration of Independence - are timeless, not time-bound; that without those principles, the noble ends set forth in the Constitution's preamble can never be achieved.

George Washington said these words in his Farewell Address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them...Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part I
The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part II

In Part II, Richard John Neuhaus writes:

Politics and religion are different enterprises...But they are constantly coupling and getting quite mixed up with one another. There is nothing new about this. What is relatively new is the naked public square. The naked public square is the result of political doctrine and practice that would exclude religion and religiously grounded values from the conduct of public business...

When religion in any traditional or recognizable form is excluded from the public square, it does not mean that the public square is in fact naked...

The truly naked public square is at best a transitional phenomenon. It is a vacuum begging to be filled. When the democratically affirmed institutions that generate and transmit values are excluded, the vacuum will be filled by the agent left in control of the public square, the state. In this manner, a perverse notion of the disestablishment of religion leads to the establishment of the state as church...

Our problems, then, stem in large part from the philosophical and legal effort to isolate and exclude the religious dimension of culture...only the state can..."lay claim to compulsive authority."...of all the institutions in societies, only religion can invoke against the state a transcendent authority and have its invocation seconded by "the people" to whom a democratic state is presumably accountable. For the state to be secured from such challenge, religion must be redefined as a private, emphatically not public, phenomenon. In addition, because truly value-less existence is impossible for persons or societies, the state must displace religion as the generator and bearer of values...

[T]he notion of the secular state can become the prelude to totalitarianism. That is, once religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only two actors in it - the state and the individual. Religion as a mediating structure...is no longer available as a countervailing force to the ambitions of the state...

If law and polity are divorced from moral judgment...all things are permitted and...all things will be done...When in our public life no legal prohibition can be articulated with the force of transcendent authority, then there are no rules rooted in ultimacies that can protect the poor, the powerless and the marginal...

Politics is an inescapably moral enterprise. Those who participate in it are...moral actors. The word "moral" here...means only that the questions engaged [in politics] are questions that have to do with what is right or wrong, good or evil. Whatever moral dignity politics may possess depends upon its being a process of contention and compromise among moral actors, not simply a process of accomodation among individuals in pursuit of their interests. The conflict in American public life today, then, is not a conflict between morality and secularism. It is a conflict of moralities in which one moral system calls itself secular and insists that the other do likewise as the price of admission to the public arena. That insistence is in fact a demand that the other side capitulate...

The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part III
Honoring the Land We Love

In the preceding post, Roger Pilon writes about the Declaration of Independence and Constitution:

Appealing to all mankind, the Declaration's seminal passage opens with perhaps the most important line in the document: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident." Grounded in reason, "self-evident" truths invoke the long tradition of natural law, which holds that there is a "higher law" of right and wrong from which to derive human law and against which to criticize that law at any time. It is not political will, then, but moral reasoning, accessible to all, that is the foundation of our political system.

But if reason is the foundation of the Founders' vision - the method by which we justify our political order - liberty is its aim. Thus, cardinal moral truths are these:

...that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness...That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

We are all created equal, as defined by our natural rights; thus, no one has rights superior to those of anyone else. Moreover, we are born with those rights, we do not get them from government - indeed, whatever rights or powers government has come from us, from "the Consent of the Governed." And our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness imply the right to live our lives as we wish - to pursue happiness as we think best, by our own lights - provided only that we respect the equal rights of others to do the same. Drawing by implication upon the common law tradition of liberty, property, and contract - its principles rooted in "right reason" - the Founders thus outlined the moral foundations of a free society.

Dr. Pilon concluded his essay by writing:

In the end, however, no constitution can be self-enforcing. Government officials must respect their oaths to uphold the Constitution; and we the people must be vigilant in seeing that they do. The Founders drafted an extraordinarily thoughtful plan of government, but it is up to us, to each generation, to preserve and protect it for ourselves and for future generations. For the Constitution will live only if it is alive in the hearts and minds of the American people. That, perhaps, is the most enduring lesson of our experiment in ordered liberty.

In addition, the following posts from a series entitled "Theocrats, Moral Relativism & the Myth of Religious Tolerance" address some of the broader issues in this necessary and important public debate:

Part I: The Difference Between Religious Freedom & Religious Tolerance

In Part I, William Voegeli writes:

...The more practical problem with the fact-value distinction is that no one, including those who espouse it, actually believes it. No one is really "value-neutral" with respect to his own values, or regards them as values, arbitrary preferences that one just happens to be saddled with...

The problem with relativism is its insistence that all moral impulses are created equal - that there are no reasons to choose the standards of the wise and good over those of the deranged and cruel. A world organized according to that principle would be anarchic, uninhabitable. As Leo Strauss wrote, the attempt to "regard nihilism as a minor inconvenience" is untenable.

The problem with relativists is that they always dismiss other people's beliefs, but spare their own moral preferences from their doctrine's scoffing...

Justice, rights, moral common sense - either these are things we can have intelligent discussions about or they aren't...

Thomas Williams adds:

...separation of church and state becomes separation of public life and religious belief. Religion was excluded from public conversation and relegated strictly to the intimacy of home and chapel. Religious tolerance is a myth, but a myth imposed by an anti-religious intellectual elite.

This "tolerant" mentality is especially problematic when applied in non-confessional countries -such as the United States - where an attitude of tolerance is not that of the state religion toward unsanctioned creeds, but of a non-confessional secular state toward religion itself...

Dignitatis Humanae, on the contrary, taught that religion is a human good to be promoted, not an evil to be tolerated. While government should not presume to command religious acts, it should "take account of the religious life of the citizenry and show it favor." Religious practice forms part of the common good of society and should be encouraged rather than marginalized...

Part II: Are We Hostile Toward or Encouraging Religious Belief?

Part II quotes a Supreme Court decision written by William O. Douglas:

...We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for as wide a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality to any one group and that lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. Government may not finance religious groups nor undertake religious instruction nor blend secular and sectarian education nor use secular institutions to force one or some religion on any person. But we find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence...

Part III: Consequences of Excluding Religion From the Public Square
Part IV: Moral Recovery via Rediscovering the Meaning of Words

In the last post, Robert Reilly writes:

You cannot use "evil" as an adjective until you know it as a noun...the new struggle [today] is over the meaning of freedom...In Veritatis Splendor, the pope warned of "the risk of an alliance between democracy and ethical relativism, which would remove any sure moral reference point from political and social life, and on a deeper level make the acknowledgment of truth impossible." If truth is impossible, so are the "self-evident truths" upon which free government depends. Then, one can understand everything in terms of power and its manipulation...[John Paul II] raised the hope that moral recovery is possible by calling for it.

Pope Benedict XVI adds these words:

No great, inspiring culture of the future can be built upon the moral principle of relativism. For at its bottom such a culture holds that nothing is better than anything else, and that all things are in themselves equally meaningless...The culture of relativism invites its own destruction...by its own internal incoherence...

To which I offered these thoughts:

Our heritage not only acknowledges the existence of moral truths but argues that these truths can be discovered by either faith or reason - thereby confirming what has been true for centuries: This public conversation about the role of moral truths in the public square does not require everyone to hold identical religious beliefs. It does require us to be morally serious and to firmly place moral relativism in the dustbin of history.

Moral truths belong in the public square to avoid the societal consequences of moral relativism. Only with a belief in moral truths can words become meaningful again and enable us to begin a public conversation about principles such as freedom and - from there - to discuss proper ways to introduce their meaning back into the public square.

Rhode Island's Charitable Giving

The discussion about the northeast's charitable giving continues. Rhode Island, in particular, has traditionally done poorly in the Catalogue for Philanthropy's "Generosity index", which uses "average adjusted gross income (AAGI) to the rank of each state's average itemized charitable deductions". Rhode Island ranked 47th in the Generosity Index compiled from 2005 data.

The Catalogue for Philanthropy's methodology, however, has been criticized for failing to take into account regional differences in the value of a dollar and, in response, The Boston Foundation compiled an analysis of charitable giving in November 2005 that included state-level cost-of-living and tax-burden adjustments to income. Though the Boston foundation refused to rank the states, this is how I characterized the findings of their study…

The Boston Foundation's charitable giving metric places Rhode Island in the middle of the pack. States most similar to Rhode Island are Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arizona and Montana.

Well, according to the Providence Business News, the Catalogue for Philanthropy has come back with a methodology of their own for insulating their results from cost-of-living concerns. In their most recent survey, the Catalogue looked only at charitable giving from earners guaranteed to have lots of disposable income no matter where they live, specifically, earners who reported an income of $200,000 or more. ($200,000 was also chosen, I suspect, as it coincides with the top range reported by IRS in its breakdown of number-of-tax returns by income level).

Guess who's dead last in charitable giving effort coming from the $200,000+ tax bracket…

Wyoming residents with incomes of $200,000 or more per year gave the most to charity in 2005, followed by residents of Oklahoma, South Dakota, Arkansas and Utah, the nonprofit Catalogue for Philanthropy said in its 11th annual report. Their peers in Rhode Island gave the least, followed by New Jersey, Alaska, Hawaii and West Virginia….

"Over the past 11 years nationwide, in the over-$200,000 income bracket, income increased 17.9 percent and charitable giving increased 24.6 percent. In Rhode Island, that income bracket increased by 6 percent, while its charitable giving increased 7 percent.", [said Martin Cohn, a spokesman for the Catalogue for Philanthropy].

Are our stingy upper-income residents making the rest of Rhode Island look bad? And perhaps more importantly, given that the numbers in the PBN story suggest about $80,000,000 missing from charitable programs (about $6,500-per-earner to bring Rhode Island up to level of other states, times about 12,000 tax returns of $200,000 or more, according to IRS figures), although there is no guarantee that all of this money would be going to local charities, doesn't this suggest that there is something to Governor's Carcieri's call for local charities to do more, not in terms of charities exerting greater effort, but in terms of local donors stepping up to give the charities more to work with?

An Unworldly Association of Statistics

These are curious statistics to compare:

To put the roughly one-third who believe in ghosts and UFOs in perspective, it's about the same as, in recent AP-Ipsos polls, the 36 percent who said they are baseball fans; the 37 percent who said the U.S. made the right decision to invade Iraq; and the 31 percent who approve of the job President Bush is doing.

Ah the rubes! Well, not really:

A smaller but still substantial 23 percent say they have actually seen a ghost or believe they have been in one's presence, with the most likely candidates for such visits including single people, Catholics and those who never attend religious services. By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter.

I suppose that might explain dead people voting...

The Left Comes 'Round Right?

Perhaps owing to a natural affinity for arguments that put the United States in a stumbling-behemoth light, retired ABC leftist, Bristol photographer, and occasional Providence Journal op-ed contributor Jerry Landay makes some points with which I agree:

... Breakdown, [social scientist Leopold Kohr] stated [in the 1950s], is the product of social organs that implode when they grow too vast. They need immense and ever-greater amounts of input — wealth, tax revenues, resources — to sustain and nourish their infrastructures. A point is reached when these demands became too great.

Healthy institutions depend on the free flow of communications, top to bottom and back. Ultimately, with too many layers of bureaucracy increasing separation, communications break down. The gap grows between people and their governments, along with the rupture of essential feedback loops that organizations depend on to deal swiftly with acute needs. Human misery and social upheavals spread, external relations worsen, and wars grow exponentially as a result.

Perhaps Mr. Landay will join me in advocating for a return of governance rights to the states and advocating against the creeping movement toward international government. The problem isn't really layers of bureaucracy or government, per se, but the fact that power increasingly resides at the most remote levels.

In the interest of political harmony, I urge conservatives to resist the urge to explain to folks who begin to come around to conclusions such as Landay's that decreasing size and increasing localization of authority would necessarily result in regions that enforce a social regime completely at odds with their own beliefs. They might decide that being "too big — too much — too many — too late" isn't such a bad thing when its result is the enforcement thereof.

Just a Quick Shake of the Head

Reading Pat Crowley's reaction in the comments section of my previous post, I find myself shaking my head at the inability of a certain type to comprehend that some people take an honest interest in the world around them and pursue and present knowledge with the intention of finding the truth.

I meant it when I said that everybody involved in the latest round of the Tiverton teacher contract spat may be better informed than me, and I mean it when I say that I'm interested in the counterarguments to that which I've found. I've no direct personal investment in this fight — except, of course, as a taxpayer and a parent in Tiverton — and I'm not colluding with anybody to affect negotiations.

I'm not even especially invested in my argument. If it turns out that Pat is correct on the law (which would seem to require that subsequent case law had gutted the legislated language, although I could be wrong about that, too), I'll admit it and move on to argue that the law is perverse and that Mr. Rearick was right to challenge it.

"Shame!"

Mark Steyn solves the problem of our lack of general consensus about what to shout at speakers who deserve remonstration:

This year I marked the anniversary of September 11th by driving through Massachusetts. It wasn't exactly planned that way, just the way things panned out. So, heading toward Boston, I tuned to Bay State radio colossus Howie Carr and heard him reading out portions from the official address to the 9/11 commemoration ceremony by Deval Patrick, who is apparently the governor of Massachusetts. 9/11, said Governor Patrick, "was a mean and nasty and bitter attack on the United States."

"Mean and nasty"? He sounds like an over-sensitive waiter complaining that John Kerry's sent back the aubergine coulis again. But evidently that's what passes for tough talk in Massachusetts these days — the shot heard around the world and so forth. Anyway, Governor Patrick didn't want to leave the crowd with all that macho cowboy rhetoric ringing in their ears, so he moved on to the nub of his speech: 9/11, he continued, "was also a failure of human beings to understand each other, to learn to love each other."

I was laughing so much I lost control of the wheel and the guy in the next lane had to swerve rather dramatically. He flipped me the Universal Symbol of Human Understanding. I certainly understood him, though I'm not sure I could learn to love him. Anyway I drove on to Boston and pondered the governor's remarks. He had made them, after all, before an audience of 9/11 families: Six years ago, two of the four planes took off from Logan Airport, and so citizens of Massachusetts ranked very high among the toll of victims. Whether or not any of the family members present last Tuesday were offended by Governor Patrick, no-one cried "Shame!" or walked out on the ceremony. Americans are generally respectful of their political eminences, no matter how little they deserve it.

Let's all agree on "Shame!" as the voice from the crowd when the crowd is too polite (or deluded) to take the microphone away.

Another Take on Blue States

Speaking of blue states, in his forthcoming book The Bluest State: How Democrats Created the Massachusetts Blueprint for American Political Disaster, Boston political analyst Jon Keller offers this short diagnosis of the problems with national-scale liberalism, all too evident in the state politics of our neighbor to the north (via Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix)…

Democrats have limped through a generation of tenuous grasp on national political power in part because they’ve been infected with the Massachusetts viruses I’ve described: addiction to tax revenues and a raging edifice complex couched in disrespect for wage earners; phony identity politics without real results for women and minorities; reflexive anti-Americanism in foreign affairs; vain indulgence in obnoxious political correctness; self-serving featherbedding; NIMBYism; authoritarian distortion of the balance of governmental power, all simmered in a broth of hypocritical paternalism.

Any of that sound familiar to Rhode Island residents?

Counteracting "Progressives"

As it happens, I agree with Jonah Goldberg's response to conservatives who are concerned about the reemergence of the term "progressive" as a trick to maneuver opponents into the rhetorical position of "against progress":

Re: the need for conservatives to come up with their own label. No thanks. Sure, I'd like to have "liberal" back — at least to describe traditional libertarians — but I would oppose tooth and nail the idea of casting aside the word conservative simply to market it better. That's the logic of "compassionate conservatism," Kempism, and other schools of thought which hold that conservatism needs to adopt liberal assumptions in order to be "relevant." The fact that conservatives are willing to stick by their ideas and label is a sign and source of conservative strength, not weakness. Coming up with some "progressive" sounding label for conservatives merely concedes an argument we need not concede. Conservatism didn't need the adjective "compassionate" and it doesn't need any other clever repackaging. It is what it is. If we need to embrace some new reforms that's fine. Conservatives understand that times change. But just call them conservative reforms. Or just call them reforms conservatives can get behind.

Nonetheless, while I wouldn't have the Right pursue a deliberate strategy of name-changing (market tested, as it were), I do think it might be helpful to consolidate a rejoinder to the "against progress" slander into a comparative term. The first step is to articulate the problem with marching under the banner of Progress — namely, that it offers no qualifiers addressing toward what, by what means, or with what protections progress ought to be pursued. As anybody who has spent time debating progressives will have observed, they've a peculiar certainty that their current views define the future and a frightening faith that it can be dictated with only token efforts to preserve the uncapturable treasures of our tradition.

So what, if not opposite, would be opposed to Progress and progressives? It sounds a tad clunky, but the word to which I keep returning in my search through dictionaries and thesauri is Maturity, which would make us, I suppose, maturists.

What's in a Catch Phrase?

Kiersten Marek offers a rare opportunity to highlight — in productive, conversational terms — what liberals and conservatives see differently in one of the topics over which they wrangle:

I know some at Anchorrising.com and the head of the Rhode Island Republican party, Giovanni Cicione, complain of the strong poverty advocacy lobby in the state, but when I read statistics like those above, it seems to me that our poverty advocacy lobby is not strong enough.

The statistics to which she refers are the various room and board payments to foster households in the Southern New England states, among which Rhode Island's are substantially lower than the others. I'm not inclined to argue against increasing in-the-field payments; rather, the phrase that draws my attention is "strong poverty advocacy lobby."

Like many who share my general ideology, I'm suspicious of these catch phrases not only because they're grammatically vulgar (as if somebody's advocating poverty), but also because the linguistic contortions just give the impression that they're disguising emphases. I don't think, for example, that many people on my side of the aisle are opposed to strong advocacy on behalf of those in need. (Otherwise, I'd find my church a much less hospitable place.) The complaint is that having a "strong poverty advocacy lobby" doesn't mean that the worthy cause is being advocated with particular strength or effectiveness; it means that the lobby wields strength on its own behalf.

If advocacy on behalf of the poor were strong, it wouldn't rely so heavily on those who stand to benefit financially from increasing budgets, but would treat service providers as another group that must be lobbied for the benefit of those who receive services. As Marc, especially, has been pointing out, lately, the funds are there, and I'd suggest to Kiersten that the goal of lobbying shouldn't be a bottomless pit of taxpayer resources, but accountability and effectiveness of the entire system, from the tax collector through to low-rung state employees.

Re: The Confluence of Homosexuality and Abortion

Contra Ian Donnis, you can make this stuff up:

Mohler began by summarizing some recent research into sexual orientation, and advising his Christian readership that they should brace for the possibility that a biological basis for homosexuality may be proven.

Mohler wrote that such proof would not alter the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality, but said the discovery would be ''of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.''

He also referred to a recent article in the pop-culture magazine Radar, which explored the possibility that sexual orientation could be detected in unborn babies and raised the question of whether parents _ even liberals who support gay rights _ might be open to trying future prenatal techniques that would reverse homosexuality.

Indeed, anybody who took the initiative to find out what conservative Christians actually believe, argue, and proclaim wouldn't have to make anything up; it would be more accurate to say that they could predict it as a matter of straightforward analysis. As Rev. Joseph Fessio, provost of Ave Maria University and editor of Ignatius Press, explains:

''Same-sex activity is considered disordered,'' Fessio said. ''If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb, and a way of treating them that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science.''

For those with disorders of a different sort, I'll put it simply: we right-wing fanatics simply believe that unborn children are in fact human beings, worthy, at the very least, of a right not to be killed. It is not the womb that is inviolable, but the individual, and to the extent that a treatment is legitimate for those outside of the womb, it is equally so within it. I'm not saying that some magnificently speculative procedure to treat a condition that may or may not originate in the womb is legitimate, let alone desirable, but if one is not surprised that an Evangelical would support medical treatment for homosexuality, then it betrays ignorance to level accusations of hypocrisy in this case.

Unfortunately, another thing that needn't be made up because it is so predictable is the utter inanity of liberal reactions, of which Mary Ann Sorrentino's is a fine example. In keeping with the apparent bigotry by which all conservative Christians are merely mind-melded drones — or "hordes of so-called Christians," if you prefer — Sorrentino evinces the above mentioned ignorance:

Mohler belongs to the same faction that has opposed pre-birth medical tampering in the past. Gender selection, in vitro fertilizations, even some pre-birth surgical procedures have all been deemed wrongful interference in divine territory. Now that these people see a way to diddle with the sexuality of the unborn, however, many of them are all over that possibility.

For the most part, the only "medical tampering" that raises substantial opposition from this so-called faction is that which involves death as its objective. That, indeed, is the primary objection to in vitro fertilization: that it requires the creation of embryos who will not be brought to term. Similarly, gender selection has largely been an issue — a real one, actually in practice, as opposed to the speculative brave-new-world version — because the "selection" takes the form of culling. As for "some pre-birth surgical procedures," I'm not sure what Sorrentino is talking about, much less who specifically objected to them, but her vagueness is typical.

Then, as if adhering closely to the guidelines of some rhetorical propaganda instruction manual, Sorrentino follows ignorance with laughable plying of emotional strings — describing a Hollywood movie that features a gay-therapy version of Clockwork Orange treatment and wondering darkly, "Is this the kind of thing that 'people of God' really support?" (I love the quotation marks around "people of God," as if she cannot even bring herself to countenance the sincerity of believers, even as she attempts to manipulate their good will.) This stratagem could only be followed with a faith-based elevation of homosexuality's existential essentialness beyond even genetics:

If Mohler is allowed to have his way, and society begins to tamper with the sexual preferences of about-to-be citizens still floating in the womb, the probable result will be a generation of would-be heterosexuals who eventually revert to their preferences for same-gender lovers.

Well, I suppose that, in an argument that brushes past two layers of speculative outcomes and transforms a villain's out-loud thinking into an assertion of "a way," it isn't out of place to declare the probability that all will be for naught. Similarly, it is not out of place for the author of such manifestly empty-headed rhetoric to read the minds of people with differing opinions and know — just know — that they are all about hate.

Autoesteemism in the Classroom

In a comment to my post on sex education, Rhody points to another of those differences of understanding between conservatives and liberals that seem nigh impossible to resolve:

I think the best way to discourage sex before marriage is building kids' self-esteem and letting them know they don't have to give it up to feel good about themselves. And the same lesson can be applied to gay teens, too.

But "self-esteem" seems to be considered just as dirty a word in many conservative circles as "masturbation."

I'd say that "self-esteem" — that is, self-esteem trapped in quotation marks, as a buzzword — is rightly a dirty word among conservatives, because it indicates a mushy make-adults-feel-good dictum that the metaphorical fat kid in the class should never feel badly about himself. A more conservative approach toward a similar end would be for teachers, and other adults concerned about a particular student, to put forward the additional effort to help the child achieve such things as make him deserving of self-esteem. The difference is between banning competition so that nobody can lose and acknowledging that the possibility of loss is what gives value to success. Failure is never absolute, only context-specific, spurring the loser to find ways in which to succeed, perhaps by choosing other areas of competition.

But back to sex.

We're at an enigmatic time in cultural history, indeed, if the (I daresay) antiquated notion that young girls are consenting to sex in order, simply, to prove that they are desirable to males can coexist with a conviction that any sexual orientation is tangibly equivalent to any other (as for the purposes of defining marriage). If there is no substantive differentiation to be made between male-female sexual relationships and, say, male-male sexual relationships, then there is no justification for Rhody's sexist imagery when he muses that it might be better if "sexual excess went into towels instead of teenage girls." The construction exhibits an undeniably phallocentric understanding of who is ceding and who is claiming power.

It can no longer be taken for granted that girls, much less boys, believe that they are giving something up when they consent to premarital — even prematriculational — sex. The non-contingent "self-esteem" in the liberal arsenal does not apply, because liberals are defining sex as something natural and ordinary for both genders to pursue and perform, without requiring any substantial proof of worthiness on the part of potential partners (e.g., marital commitment).

For conservatives, in contrast, human worth is intrinsic, but self-esteem is contingent upon our assent to a higher behavioral norm than that expressed, for example, by the safe-sex-education assumption that abstinence is unrealistic. In religious terms, we are all of equal worth in the eyes of God, but the value that we perceive ourselves to have to Him is contingent upon our willingness to place our relationship with Him (especially through self-improvement) above our biological urges.

It isn't that children have something so valuable that we must puff up their self-esteem in order to enable them to hold on to it. Rather, by insisting that they not participate in the objectification inherent in teenage sexual desire, that they treat sex as something more than the mutual gratification of human objects, we teach them that they can achieve a state of being that justifies their holding themselves in high regard.

Avoiding the Hypocrisy of Chastity

One is justifiably reluctant to declare Michael Novak flat wrong on matters of religion and culture, but I'm compelled to do just that in response to his writing:

Being a liberal means having a right to do anything that you want sexually anywhere, anytime, and with anybody. Thus, there is no way for liberals to be hypocritical about sex. Except by being chaste.

To avoid such hypocrisy, all liberals need do is either fetishize chastity or make an orientation of it, as with asexuality. Thus, the avoidance of or disinclination toward sex becomes, itself, a sexual state of being. Whereas in Christian thought, both sex and chastity, when rightly ordered, are spiritual acts.

The reason these aren't merely two sides of a coin — and people inevitably will judge for themselves the significance of this difference — is that conservatives are skeptical of attempts to broaden the preferences, whims, and even lusts that are seen as rightly ordered toward God, while liberals are content to incorporate all of life into sexuality. And that brings me back to the intellectually safer ground of agreeing with Mr. Novak, who also writes that "the center of liberal values has migrated to sex and gender."

Voting for Delusion

I was so perplexed by Froma Harrop's column about the Democrat Party's 50-State Strategy that I thought for a moment that I'd missed something that would be, politically, on the order of magnitude of the Earth's poles moving to the equator:

Imagine Democrats in Washington who don't all sound like Henry Waxman, Charlie Rangel or Ted Kennedy. That's about to happen, as party Chairman Howard Dean's 50-state strategy bears fruit. The plan involves running strong candidates on Republican turf and letting them speak the native tongue. Some worry that a socially varied Democratic Party would lead to chaos. California liberals would clash with Colorado libertarians, who would spar with Bible Belt Carolinians.

Doesn't have to happen. A more diverse Democratic delegation could avoid geo-cultural warfare by sending many socially contentious issues back to the states, where they belong. Then Democrats in Washington could concentrate on their lunch-pail issues, above all, economic justice.

The "some worry" phrase makes it sound as if there's a debate currently ongoing over a revolutionary plan by the Man Who Said "Aaarrgghh," so I thought I'd see what this 50-State Strategy might entail. Well, according to the official Democrat Web page, the 50-State Strategy is essentially an organizational, get-out-the-vote kind of thing, not a grand statement of principle. Indeed, nowhere on the Web site was I able to find a single indication that the Democrats have any intention of changing their platform or political approach, let alone so much as a hint that Roe v. Wade might be on the Democrats' internal negotiation table.

In other words, Harrop's appeal to Democrat federalism is wishful thinking to the point of delusion and, therefore, could be wished for either party... or both. Personally, I do wish for both parties to incorporate stronger federalist principles in their platforms. It would be folly, however, to suggest that any particular strategy from either party is likely to further that end — much less make it "about to happen."

If only Harrop had provided citations for the discussion that led her to indulge in daydreams, perhaps readers could figure out who is playing whom. As it is, one gets the impression that Harrop is merely exploiting a promise of federalism to badmouth President Bush for the anti-federalist sins of which both parties are perhaps unsalvageably guilty.

ADDENDUM:
As a footnote, I'd like to mention that Harrop's apparent understanding of the mechanisms of society in a federalist framework makes it a much less appealing notion than it ought to be:

But when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that its state constitution guarantees same-sex couples the legal benefits of marriage, President Bush immediately stuck his nose in. At a campaign stop in Indiana, he denounced New Jersey's "activist" judges. Whether these state judges are activist or not should be the concern of New Jerseyans and no one else.

Unless we are to be a balkanized nation without its own character, what happens in each state ought to concern us all, and public statements are perhaps the most undeniably appropriate means of exerting influence across state borders. The question federalism seeks to answer is who gets the final say for each area and at what level of government.

Deriving Quality in Life

In response to my reaction to Froma Harrop's column on population growth, reader Barry comments:

As a math teacher who often has to explain exponential growth, I appreciate Froma Harrop's explanation of the perils of population growth, even though it makes both conservatives and liberals uneasy. The US population has more than doubled since I was born, and it is growing at a rate that will double again in about 70 years unless something changes. We have already seen the warning signs with 300 million people: loss of open space, ugliness spreading, congestion, depletion of some resources that make us more dependent on foreign sources, and more. What will things be like if the US reaches 600 million, well within the lifetime of those born now? Wishful thinking will not make the mathematics go away. It is clearly in our self interest to slow the growth of human population, and we can do this now without coercion just by making family planning available to all the world's couples who seek this but do not have the information or resources to use it.

Far be it from me to argue the mechanics of exponential growth with a math teacher, but it mightn't be as imprudent to wonder whether the principle actually has the political implications that accompany his calculations. My thoughts keep coming back to Social Security. If our population growth is so out of control, why is this federal pyramid scheme lurching toward insolvency?

According to U.S. Census historical data (PDF), the population of the United States was 76 million in 1900, 150.7 million in 1950, and 281.4 million in 2000. In 2050, the bureau projects (PDF), it will be 419.9 million. A few quick calculations show that the rate of population growth is slowing — from 98% during 1900–1950 to 49% during 2000–2050. Granted, the latter period will require a dramatically larger number of actual people to achieve that dramatically lower growth rate, but I question the wisdom of intentionally retarding a trend that is decreasing on its own.

Back to Social Security: According to that Census projection, 21% of 2050's 420 million people will be over the age of 65 (compared with 12% in 2000). The fewer the new citizens arriving (in one way or another) before that date, the higher that percentage will be. How will that affect our elusive quality of life? On its FAQ page, the Negative Population Growth organization to which Harrop approvingly refers simply, if humorously, punts on the matter of Social Security:

There is no denying that Social Security's viability requires some tough decisions. But adding scores of millions of new workers would at best postpone, not solve, the Social Security problem�and at an enormous cost in resource depletion and environmental damage. Rather, we should see the aging of America as an opportunity to begin transitioning to sustainability.

What a marvelously noncommittal phrase, "transitioning to sustainability"! When it comes to quality of life, it appears that the choice may be between lessening traffic on the way to work or managing ever to retire. Or maybe we just have to give the failed organizing principle of socialism another try.

Reading through the FAQ, one discovers markers of the underlying ideology behind the impulse to control the population of the United States, nicely consolidated in the essay on Darwinism with which it answers the plain question of "What is NPG's view of abortion?":

All successful species, [Darwin] said, have the ability to bear more young than their environment can support. This enables species to recover from food-short periods and it enables the best adapted to expand and fill new environmental niches when the opportunity presents. ...

That excess fecundity is central to the population dynamics of living creatures. ... The Darwinian controls, imposed in part by our destruction of the ecosystem, will stop the growth.

Seen in that light, family planning is perhaps the most fundamental advance in the human condition. ... Family planning is not just something that we are entitled to practice for our own purposes. It is something that the Earth itself badly needs, to escape the damage of continued human population growth. It is essential to the preservation of ecological balance in the face of a species grown far too successful. ...

Such foresight is good in theory, but it may not be sufficient in practice. The common good is probably the last thing on people's minds when they are making love, and abortion may be necessary, for the good of the woman and of society, when contraception is not practiced. In the United States, there is one induced abortion for every three live births. ...

The very idea of family planning is not very old, and the idea of tying it to social ends is a new one in human experience. We are far from knowing how to do it. Until we have learned, abortion plays a role as the final resort for women who don't want children or can't raise them. And Roe vs. Wade provides the legal framework to reconcile it with other societal goals.

I've elided many statements that would lead to worthwhile discussions, but the blending of Darwinism with environmentalism and a suspicion of human fertility, leading to a conclusion about the necessity of abortion, points to a defining belief: that humankind can, and should, micromanage itself toward an ideal set by an intellectual elite.

On the problem of Europe and Japan's having "too few working people to support the elderly," for example, the group suggests that "a reversal of population growth... offers those countries the opportunity to decide what population size is best for them." Simple as that. "If they decide a larger size is better suited for them, they can raise their fertility back to replacement level or increase immigration." Never mind that generations may have to suffer through such adjustments; never mind whether people (or which people) will reproduce on command; never mind that the immigrant solution can change a nation's culture irreparably.

What begins with Harrop's simple suggestion that "300 million is too many Americans" turns out, with very little research or thought required, to be quite a bit more complicated. Harrop and NPG may respectively dismiss concerns about our economic health as merely a desire for "100 million new customers" that "benefits business interests," but one cannot leave economic well-being out of discussions of quality of life. One also cannot ignore the dangers of the civilized world's leading by example on this count; the population of the Muslim Middle East, it's worth noting, grew 300% during the latter half of the last century.

The essential dividing line of the modern world may be between those who believe that quality of life derives from experience of it, as created, and those who believe that we can fine-tune our society to achieve a self-determined self-interest. The line isn't exactly between theists and secularists, but it's close. And it must be a cold realization for those in the latter group that their own prophet Darwin might point out that Nature selects for fertility and therefore for worldviews that celebrate it.

It doesn't take much discernment to name the cosmic force that achieves its ends by disrupting nature and corrupting faith. It doesn't take much consideration to realize that even well-intentioned social engineering can go horribly awry. And it doesn't take much imagination to envision the frightening strategies that may replace population-growth scare tactics when the fecund fail or decline to get with the program.

Libertarian Dissonance: Who?s Right, the Daily Kos or the Wall Street Journal, and Does It Matter?

This week, "Kos" (Markos Moulitsas), uber-blogger of the left-blogosphere, argued in a Cato Institute's monthly electronic journal that the Democratic party is the natural home for voters who believe in individual liberty...

It was my fealty to the notion of personal liberty that made me a Republican when I came of age in the 1980s. It is my continued fealty to personal liberty that makes me a Democrat today.

The case against the libertarian Republican is so easy to make that I almost feel compelled to stipulate it and move on.

Of course, Kos is wrong. Consider some of the America's biggest domestic challenges, and the potential solutions that maximize personal liberty...

1. Improving the Quality of Education: Public School choice, charters, and vouchers
2. Retirement Security: Inidividual retirement accounts
3. Healthcare: Health-Savings Accounts, Decoupling health insurance from the workplace
4. Political Participation: Repeal campaign finance limits on free speech.

Is there any doubt which party supports the liberty-maximizing solutions, and which opposes them?

As many commenters to the original article have noted, the centerpiece of Kos' "libertarianism" is increased government regulation of private business, which is not libertarian at all, with some paeans to issues like flag-burning added on. (Combining attitudes on flag burning with campaign finance reform is as enlightening an illustration of mainstream Democratic thinking on individual liberty as there is: the government should leave individuals free to engage in symbolic, isolated acts, but as soon as individuals want to take actions that might influence the larger society, then it's regulate-to-the-max!)

However, Kos' attempt to redefine a political phiosophy as its opposite is not the point. He freely admits he is an activist, not an intellectual. The more interesting point is that as an activist, if he thinks libertarians are worth courting, he must believe there's substantial voting bloc of them out there.

However, a Wall Street Journal editorial that appeared the day after Kos' article hinted (unintentionally) at the opposite. The Journal suggests that the Republican leaders don't believe that there are enough voters in the electorate who believe in individual freedom to make liberty-maximizing solutions to domestic problems political winners...

Social Security reform was never going to be easy, and Mr. Bush's war-driven decline in job approval meant he couldn't move any Democrats. But that still doesn't excuse such prominent Republicans as Tom Davis (Virginia) and Roy Blunt (Missouri) for resisting their President's reform effort behind the scenes. So frightened were they that they never even brought the subject up for a vote.

Perhaps the most puzzling abdication was the GOP failure to do anything at all on health care. The window for saving private health care from government encroachment is closing, and both business and workers are feeling the pinch from rising costs. Yet Republicans failed to make health-care savings accounts more attractive, failed to let business associations offer their own health plans, and failed even to bring to a vote Arizona Congressman John Shadegg's bill to avoid costly state mandates by letting health insurance be marketed across state boundaries.

Add to the Journal's despair the fact that President Bush allowed the No-Child-Left-Behind act to be turned from a potentially-meaningful school choice plan ito an increased layer of centralized regulation and that he signed of campaign finance reform act of 2002, and it's hard to make the case that the Republicans have done their part in advancing an agenda of individual liberty.

Accepting that the WSJ and the KOS are reliable windows into their respective sides? political thought, it seems that an agenda of individual liberty doesn't have a home in either political party right now. America has one party (the Democrats) so committed to an agenda of centralizing government power, it has talked itself into believing that government regulation is freedom! We have the other side (the Republicans) that doesn't believe that many Americans really support individual liberty, and has resigned itself to the inevitable adoption of a collectivist agenda. How will liberty prevail in this environment?

The Trust of Children

Via a predictably political RI Future post, I came across this even more predictably political DailyKos post:

You do not abuse the trust of children. If you find out about the possible abuse of children, you have a duty to stop it. A duty. An imperative. An oath. All those words that men say, and seldom, apparently, mean.

Because sexual abuse ruins lives forever. What happened to Foley came full circle, from molested victim to predator himself. And now new children are involved, and new lives have been affected, forever.

That is why you do not abuse the trust of children. That is why it was so very important, when the red flags were raised, from 2001 onwards, from 2003 onwards, from 2005 onwards; you have a duty to do more than the most minimally possible nothing.

Perhaps it's my scandal fatigue again that hears tones of disgustingly cynical political posturing in Kos's post, but it's rich, nonetheless, to hear preaching about abusing the trust of children from the representatives of the party of easy divorce and easier abortion.

The Tides of Values

PROEM:
I wrote the following piece for publication in the closing months of 2004. As these things happen, it was never published, but never actually rejected. In the intervening months, I've periodically looked for it online — as if I'd posted it somewhere — so it seemed prudent to go ahead and do so now.

---

Whether or not "moral values" were the decisive factor in this year's election, pervasive acceptance that they are the opposition's domain seems to have stung some liberals deeply. The Democrats have long been marketed as the party for good deeds done by proxy. As University of Connecticut professor emeritus William D'Antonio phrased it, in his Boston Globe defense of "Massachusetts liberals," "The money they have invested in their future is known more popularly as taxes."

The moral heft that some public-dime philanthropists attribute to taxation has granted the flow of federal funds a central place in the dark fantasies into which such people have recently retreated in their wounded vanity. They are discovering the great flaw of a strategy that makes a social-investment advisor out of a republican democracy.

The blue states, those that voted for John Kerry, contribute more to the federal coffers, but that money disproportionately ends up in the red states, those that voted for George Bush. As long as the priorities of the former group defined the national agenda, however, this relationship hasn't attracted much attention. Perhaps those liberals who noticed it thought the political leverage garnered through dependency was part of their investment.

But with the decisive reelection of a hated regime, coastal Democrats fear that the "segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government." The partisan who decried that state of affaires on The McLaughlin Group, Lawrence O'Donnell, believes that its continuation will generate "a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years."

Unfortunately for the budding rebels of the coasts, some of the evidence doesn't quite fit their complaint. For example, it's true that dense populations tend to vote in the Democrats' favor; hence the idea that the blue/red gap means that the tax dollars of wealthy urbanites are being funneled to rustic fundamentalists. On the local county level, however, population correlates with federal expenditures. Consequently, expenditures also correlate with party affiliation. In fact, the distribution of those dollars appears to be the better predictor of Democrats' success.

Consider New Jersey, to which the Tax Foundation attributes the "'blessing' of being the [top] state that gives far more than it receives." Using 2003 data, the average Kerry county in New Jersey has 181% the population of the average Bush county, but it receives 211% the federal largesse, according to the Census Bureau. In a state that receives back only 57¢ per federal tax dollar collected, each resident of Kerry territory accounts for $5,917 in federal expenditures, while each resident of Bush country accounts for $5,086.

Suspicions of a similar situation in Illinois led the aptly named blogger Sensible Mom to hypothesize that red counties "are contributing more to and demanding less of the federal government than the blue counties." And as it turns out, in her state, Kerry-voting counties include 53% of citizens but claim 60% of distributed federal dollars. That disparate distribution of the 73¢ that the state gets back per tax dollar translates into $6,011 for each blue county resident, compared with $4,526 for each red county resident.

Even in Mississippi, where Kerry counties are home to only 32% of the population, they claim 39% of federal expenditures. Per person, the blue sections of this red state take $8,082 from the national tax pool, while the red sections take only $6,675. As for New Mexico, which is opposite New Jersey on the Tax Foundation's list, the $1.99 that the feds return for each tax dollar accumulates to $9,517 per Kerry county citizen and $8,773 per Bush county citizen. In this case, the difference would be much greater if it weren't for almost $2 billion in non-defense procurement dollars pouring into Los Alamos county, which President Bush won with 52% of the vote.

The dramatic skew in Los Alamos raises an intriguing question: who actually gets the money? Lawrence O'Donnell claimed that "ninety percent of the red states are welfare client states of the federal government." But the Los Alamos National Laboratory and its $2.2 billion budget (FY04) are managed by the University of California, the public higher education system of the nearest blue state.

Alternately, consider the locally focused federal charity of Section 8 housing. The nation's two richest states, Connecticut and New Jersey, receive $126 and $106 per capita for Section 8, respectively. The nation's two poorest states, Mississippi and Arkansas, receive $54 and $53 per capita. For the navy blue states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the numbers are $178 and $200. Obviously, housing is more expensive in the coastal states, but again: who gets the money? The needy may manage to put roofs over their heads — in homes that don't necessarily vary qualitatively no matter the area's political color. However, the cash goes into the bank accounts and investment portfolios of landlords and property owners.

Number-crunching aside, blue-state conservatives have reason to suspect that the tides of money aren't their liberal neighbors' most significant concern. Just as there are blue hands out for federal dollars in red states, there are voters in the blue states who aren't interested in outsourcing good deeds and the provision of hope to politicians and bureaucrats. His second time on the presidential ballot, W. increased his percentage of votes in 48 states, after all. In fact, Karl Rove has noted that the Bush vote in Rhode Island increased at more than twice the national rate.

Potential secessionists might be surprised how many loyalists are in their midst. (Indeed, the more they rant, the more there will be.) Beneath the confusion of liberals' clamorous dominance on their home turf, it might actually be the case that the people who really pay for the federal government are at last being governed by sympathizers from that distant land in which "moral values" are not merely a catch phrase to be spun.

ADDENDUM:
Reader AuH2ORepublican corrected me regarding the number of states in which Bush increased his vote (see comments section). Honestly, I don't recall my source for that statistic, but I've modified the text.

Projo Editorial Board to Most of America: We Are Better than You Are

The Projo welcomes Rhode Islanders back to the first work-day of the new year with a bit of regional jingoism that is equal parts inaccurate and ugly. The gist of a Tuesday unsigned editorial is that New England and the Pacific Northwest are so superior to the rest of the country, they need not care what the rest of the country thinks...

If you think of the United States as the upper half of a human body, New England and the Pacific Northwest are its shoulders. And in an economic sense, they are....

Politicians in the South and the heartland often forget this. They sometimes denigrate the northern East and West coasts as cul-de-sacs: picturesque places of little import. They are so wrong.

America's two shoulders need not worry about what others think of them. New England and the Pacific Northwest have the best social indicators [and] the country's upper corners are where much of the money is made.

Now, if you're going to insult most of the country that you live in, you should have a few facts to back up the points you make, but this editorial doesn't present the supporting facts -- because they don't exist.

The unsigned editorial asserts that...

[New England and the Pacific Northwest] both maintain socially liberal traditions of helping the less-well-off, while staying out of people's bedrooms,

but there is no credible consensus that New England is a special place when it comes to helping the "less-well-off". The Boston Foundation recently conducted a study of state-by-state charitable giving adjusted for local cost-of-living and tax burdens. (In large measure, the study is a response to the Generosity Index, published by the Catalogue for Philanthropy, which consistently ranks New England states near the bottom in charitable giving). Though the Boston Foundation resists the concept of "ranking" states, a few state-level and regional-level conclusions are obvious.

Connecticut is the only New England state to make the Boston Foundation's top group of charitable givers in the most recent data (from 2002). Massachusetts also does well in the study, but not quite as well as the Southern states of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Vermont and New Hampshire rate near the bottom of the study. It's pretty clear that a superior New England tradition of "helping the less well off" with charitable giving does not exist.

The Boston Foundation's charitable giving metric places Rhode Island in the middle of the pack. States most similar to Rhode Island are Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arizona and Montana. When it comes to charity, RI has a lot more in common with the Deep South than it does with the rest of southern New England.

The editorial makes a second important assertion of questionable basis in reality...

The Northeast and the Northwest are both economic powerhouses, burdened with paying for much of the country's spending.

Again, there are basic facts available which counter this assertion. According to statistics compiled by the Tax Foundation, 3 of the 6 New England states -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire -- are "donor" states that pay out more in Federal income taxes than they receive. The other 3 -- Maine, Vermont, and, yes, Rhode Island -- are "beneficiary" states that receive more in Federal taxes than they pay. There is no pattern of New England superiority in matters of fiscal responsibility, and Rhode Islanders, in particular, are not paying for Sun Belt spending. Rhode Island gets all of its Federal taxes back, and then some.

Having twice taken a sloppy approach towards the facts, the editorial then delves into the realm of sloppy philosophizing...

[T]ax cuts engineered by the Sunbelt politicians will, ironically, leave more money up north for local use. After all, the country's upper corners are where much of the money is made.

There is nothing "ironic" about the fact that Federal tax cuts allow people to keep their money closer to home. The core of the argument for reducing both the Federal tax burden and Federal spending is that money is spent most effectively when it is spent by the people closest to problems and not by remote bureaucrats. Now that the liberal bloc of Projo editorial writers bloc has come to realize this, will they be consistent and advocate that Federal spending be cut so that more money can stay closer to home?

Why Liberalism is Confused

Ross Douthat, guestblogging over at AndrewSullivan.com, provides a fresh (at least to me) perspective on the fundamental problem with contemporary liberalism...

The original aim of the liberal philosophers was to remove the "high" questions, the important-but-unresolvable questions - what is virtue? is Jesus Christ the Son of God? where do we go when we die? etc. - from the political realm, where they had caused so much trouble, and into the private and personal sphere. Politics henceforth would focus on lower matters, and be more peacable because of it. The difficulty, of course, is that over time liberalism lost sight of the fact that the high questions are high, and the low questions low, and came to believe that because everyone could agree, say, that you should respect your neighbor's property and avoid killing your enemy whenever possible, these were the most important questions facing humanity, and nobody - not even essayists and intellectuals - should sweat the other, harder-to-answer stuff. In early liberalism, governments weren't supposed to take positions on Christ's divinity, because the question was too important to be adjudicated by the state; in late liberalism, writers for the Times Book Review aren't supposed to take positions on Christ's divinity, because the question isn't important enough to worry over.

Boldly Going Where Few Conservatives Have Gone Before�

�to the pages of the Providence Phoenix.

In response to Ian Donnis� Phoenix article on Rhode Island�s young Democrats and young Republicans, Justin expressed some disappointment over how quickly young Republican leaders reject any association with a robust conservatism.

In a letter to the editor in this week�s Phoenix (scroll down to the 2nd letter on the page), I attempt to explain to Rhode Island�s Republicans why their �fiscally moderate, socially conservative� �fiscally conservative, socially moderate� message is not nearly as popular as they believe it to be.

UPDATE:

The fabulously named AuH20Republican suggests, correctly, that my last sentence above paints all RI Republicans with too broad a brush. I should have said that I am attempting to explain to Rhode Island�s Republican party establishment why their �fiscally conservative, socially moderate� message is not nearly as popular as they believe it to be.

UPDATE 2:

Or maybe AuH20Republican was pointing out an even stupider mistake on my part (see the strike-through above). I think I'm ready for the new year.

The Prick of Liberal Conceit

The Providence Journal's Bob Kerr slipped a curious few paragraphs in the midst of a 600-word piece of derision:

Brown students are not enjoying their unintended celebrity. But then they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory on the social front lately.

For a while now, neighbors of the university have been complaining that student parties have spilled over in sometimes loud and ugly ways. There is apparently no guarantee that with high tuition comes an increased sense of social responsibility. At Saturday's event, some students had to leave in ambulances due to assorted excesses. High tuition also doesn't guarantee a sense of personal limits.

So Brown officials have decided to take a long overdue look at campus party policy. There could be changes.

And now, thanks to Fox News and its own roving party animal, thousands of people across the country know that at some parties at Brown University in Providence, students have sex.

Readers might infer that Brown's "long overdue look" was already underway before Bill O'Reilly gave Fox News viewers around the world a peek into the Ivy League weekend. They might therefore conclude, as Kerr does, that O'Reilly's report was "a sneaky, pointless piece of work." But that would, at the very least, assume more than the ProJo's own coverage ("Drunken revel at Brown prompts review of school policy") should allow. The party and O'Reilly's revelation thereof appear to have been a single event, from the perspective of Brown's policy makers.

What's curious is that, from the rest of his piece, one might wonder whether Kerr truly believes that Brown's policies — or its social life — need any investigation at all. His focus is not "the seedy social underbelly of a prestigious university," but the ostensible voyeurism of conservatives — whom he casts as superficially desiring reassurance "that they live lives Bill O'Reilly would approve of." But — given the longevity (and banality) of Kerr's proffered storyline — why the heat? Why the hackish interjections of "Gawwwwlleeee!!!" and "Shazzzam!!!"? Assuming that Kerr was not at that particular party, why does the stench of embarrassment puff out from behind his ire?

Perhaps what so upsets Kerr is not Fox's voyeurism, but rather its motivation, as he fancies, to "look inside the kinds of places where liberals surely lurk and do liberal things with their clothes off." In like spirit to Kerr's characterization, Anne Hersh, a Providence resident who is pushing Brown to tone down the partying in her neighborhood, suggests that the university find a way to "maintain your liberal image and curriculum, but still encourage your students to be respectful of the community at large."

It would seem beyond liberals' purview to insist — or to institute policies to ensure — that Brown students conduct themselves in a manner befitting the Ivy League. Who are they to define such a thing? In Bob Kerr's world, it is less judgmental to shriek at conservatives for noticing what liberalism apparently signifies.

Pacing Around a Disturbing Theme

My latest FactIs column, "The Premises of the Culture of Death," ponders a theme upon which I can't quite land my finger. Something about things not meaning what they mean in pulsing cultural conversation that lacks substance.

This, by the way, is my final FactIs column. I'm very grateful to the folks who produce the 'zine for giving me the opportunity, and for doing so with such consistent courtesy and encouragement. But timing is as it is, and the need to prepare my house (and household) to accommodate another child in the spring — as well as the need to support that house (and household) — will leave me unable to devote sufficient time to a regular, polished, deadlined column.

Um. Huh.

Right.

Inaugural Schadenfreude

What can one do but marvel that Providence Journal page B.01 columnist Bob Kerr would commit this to print:

It's a day to be silly. We're not just inaugurating a president; we're inaugurating a whole new way of life in which the entire country becomes its own reality show. People watch us from other places, waiting for the next pileup, the next collision, the next national obsession with a criminal lowlife. We seldom disappoint our worldwide audience. ...

We'll be living a cartoon tomorrow. Let's act appropriately.

I'll try to get some friends together for an informal seminar on what books, if any, might show up on the shelves of the George W. Bush Presidential Library when it's built sometime in 2010 over a prairie dog hole in west Texas. The Little Engine That Could? A Golfer's Life? The Pet Goat?

What can one do but offer a shake of the head, a hearty laugh, and a suggestion that the liberal media has been living in a cartoon for as long as anyone can remember. (The laugh, by the way, is at the spectacle of the last denizens refusing to see Toontown in live-action.)

ADDENDUM:
And yes, I want credit for resisting the obvious Democrat-related quips about a "national obsession with a criminal lowlife."

Respectful Competition: A Basic Requirement for a Healthy Democracy

A previous posting highlighted how the coarsening of our public debate in America has resulted from the use of extreme language that only seeks to intimidate, not to persuade.

Subsequently, there was the usual talk after the election about how the conservative winners should "moderate" their views, a code word suggesting that capitulating on key principles to liberals who lost the election was the only proper course of action. What a bunch of silly nonsense!

Politics, like business, is a competitive, contact sport. No one in their right mind believes that businesses become successful by not seeking a competitive advantage. Nor does anyone in their right mind believe that businesses become successful by appealing only to the most narrow customer base. Finally, no sensible person believes that corporate monopolies have any incentive to maintain the highest level of excellence that is a natural result of living in a competitive world.

Why should the competition for the best political principles and public policy initiatives be any different?

The losers in the 2004 election did not articulate a viable, competitive alternative vision for where America should go in the future. The best thing that could happen to our country right now would be for them to stop calling people names and start thinking outside the box. After doing that, they should come back into the public debate with innovative thinking that offers a truly competitive alternative to the winners of 2004.

Two current examples drive home what happens when there is a lack of competition in the political arena: Rhode Island politics and the spending habits of the U.S. Congress. The Rhode Island legislature is 85% Democrat, which means the minority party cannot, by itself, stop legislation. That means the majority party has no need to build a majority coalition outside its own ranks and no need to build a broader consensus. The citizens of Rhode Island are worse off because the lopsided majority means there is no competition for the best policy ideas and no way to stop officials from acting against the best interests of the citizens whom they were elected to serve. There would be the same problem if the state legislature was 85% controlled by Republicans; the pork-laden excessive spending by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress reinforces that conclusion.

To sum it all up, I offer you a quote from William Voegeli, who wrote:

The inevitable post-election blather about unity fails to make the crucial distinction. A healthy democracy does not require blurring political differences. But it must find a way to express those differences forcefully without anathematizing people who hold different views.

ADDENDUM:

Michael Barone wrote an interesting commentary on March 14, 2005 in which he suggests that the Democrats are out of gas. If true, there is a vacuum waiting to be filled by some new, creative leaders.

Cutting the Safety-Net Industry

The latest salvo in the long-running local discussion of the relationship between social workers and socialism comes from Richard Hill of Narragansett:

Schools of social work offer little to no education on how to run a business. Thus, some social workers have no concept of how to succeed without getting a check from the government. It would help the public if some of these social-work schools ended their profiling of 50 percent of the country, and taught some basic concepts of self-support to social workers.

Course number 205 could be titled "Accepting Your Capitalist Society." (Come to think of it, I could use a few pointers on self-support, myself.)

Campus Conservatism...Growing?

Much has written, including by me, of liberal bias within the Academy. The main argument against those within the Ivory Tower is by now familiar. Essentially, liberal academics champion a "diversity" that is does not include the expression of non-liberal ideas. To resolve this disparity, some, such as David Horowitz and Students for Academic freedom, have been advocating for a way to enforce a sort of ideological affirmative action. However, to this effort, Steven Lubet, a law professor at Northwestern University, offers a retort to the idea of such enforced affirmative action:

These are unexpected arguments to hear from conservatives, since they usually deny that disproportionate statistics can be taken as proof of discrimination. When it comes to employment discrimination or affirmative action, conservatives will blithely insist that the absence of minorities (in a work force or student body) simply means that there were too few "qualified applicants." And don't bother talking to them about a "glass ceiling" or "mommy track" that impedes women's careers. That's not discrimination, they say, it's "self-selection."

Conservatives abandon these arguments, however, when it comes to their own prospects in academe. Then the relative scarcity of Republican professors is widely asserted as proof of willful prejudice.

In fact, according to Lubet, conservatives are engaging in a bit of self-selection of their own by not selecting a career in academia.

Perhaps fewer conservatives than liberals are willing to endure the many years of poverty-stricken graduate study necessary to qualify for a faculty position. Perhaps conservatives are smarter than liberals, and recognize that graduate school is a poor investment, given the scant job opportunities that await new Ph.D.s. Or perhaps studious conservatives are more attracted to the greater financial rewards of industry and commerce.

I would say that he is correct, but would emphasize that, in his attempt to hoist conservatives on their own petards, he has managed to skewer the assumptions held by himself and his fellow liberals concerning affirmative action, hasn't he? However, be that as it may, it is this classically liberal elitist bit that both illustrates and confirms the attitudes of so many liberal academics:

It is completely reasonable for conservatives to flock to jobs that reward competition, aggression, self-interest and victory. So it should not be surprising that liberals gravitate to professions -- such as academics, journalism, social work and the arts -- that emphasize inquiry, objectivity and the free exchange of ideas. After all, teachers at all levels -- from nursery school to graduate school -- tend to be Democrats.

So you see, conservatives simply don't care about anyone but themselves. It is too bad that those virtues that Lubet ascribes to liberals, "inquiry, objectivity and the free exchange of ideas," are too-often quashed, either aggressively or passively (or passive-aggressively?) within so many ivy-covered walls. To be fair, Lubet recognizes that the stifling of debate is not good for his profession, but to me he comes across as only luke-warm to the idea. It is also predictable how he attempts to assign a negative connotation to "competition" and "victory" by lumping them in with "aggression" and "self-interest," the latter two having lost any sense of the "positive" in today's English language.

Besides the more organized conservative movements, there are indications that change may be affected "from the bottom up." A new book, God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation Are Changing America by Naomi Schaefer Riley (who was recently interviewed by National Review), surveys the state of conservatism, particularly of the religious sort, in our colleges. Riley cleverly tags the current batch of conservative college students with the label "Generation M" (M is for Missionary) and states that they

participate in the typical model of college behavior. They don't spend their college years experimenting with sex or drugs. They marry early and plan ahead for family life. They oppose sex outside of marriage, as well as homosexual relationships. Most dress modestly and don't drink, use drugs, or smoke. While they would disagree among themselves about what it means to be a religious person, they all assume that trying to live by a set of rules, generally laid down in scripture, is the prerequisite for a healthy, productive, and moral life.

Riley focused on traditionally religious institutions, including many that have purposely set themselves up to be "conservative" academic institutions. While the graduates of these schools, at least as portrayed by Riley, appear to be proactive in wanting to take the conservative message to the "un-enlightened" (ie, that's their "mission") in the blue states, the same willingness to engage liberals can't be said for many of the academic bastions from which the "Gen-Mers" come.

For conservatives a more heartening picture is provided by a recent piece in City Journal by Brian C. Anderson. Surveying more "traditional" universities, Anderson details how a more secular conservatism is spreading, even into the halls of the Ivy League.

The number of College Republicans, for instance, has almost tripled, from 400 or so campus chapters six years ago, to 1,148 today, with 120,000-plus members (compared with the College Democrats� 900 or so chapters and 100,000 members). And College Republicans are thriving even on elite campuses. �We�ve doubled in size over the last few years, to more than 400 students,� reports Evan Baehr, the square-jawed future pol heading the Princeton chapter. The number of College Republicans at Penn has also rocketed upward, says chapter president Stephanie Steward, from 25 or so members a couple of years ago to 700 members today. Same story at Harvard. These young Republican activists, trudging into battleground states this fall in get-out-the vote efforts, helped George W. Bush win.

Anderson notes how today's college conservative is not much different from his liberal counterpart: both tend to like the same music, the same movies, and the same pop-culture. In short, politics is the only discernable difference, specifically, the War on Terror. Other dividing lines are affirmative action policy and "family values," with conservative students against abortion and for more women having kids within a traditional family: in short, the Ozzie and Harriet ideal. However, according to Anderson, most young conservatives agree wtih their liberal peers, rather than their ideological elders, that gay marriage is acceptable. (Perhaps when Generation M, at least the secular version, begins to marry, this attitude may change).

Students have become conservative for a variety of reasons. Some have reflexively come to reject the demonization of the Western Culture with which they identify and from which they sprang. Others reject the liberal ideology that has been proven wrong on communism and various other subjects, especially when said ideology is being "rammed down" their throats. Finally, some simply enjoy being a campus rebel. Thus, we are left with a bitter irony for liberals. The liberal professoriat of today's colleges, those who comprised the very 60's counter-culture that challenged and eventually took over the academy, is now itself being challenged by a conservative counter-culture. In essence, liberals have become "the man." How funny is that.

It's a Mad, Mad World — Eh, Liberals?

Questions of schadenfreude's sinfulness aside, I have to thank Northeast Dilemma for pointing on New England Republican to an uplifting column by Katha Pollitt. I daresay that, with this paragraph, Pollitt opens wide the thickets that hide the secret path to a sunnier political perspective:

Sometimes I think America is becoming another place, unrecognizable. David Harvey, the great geographer, tells the story of a friend who returned to the United States last spring after seven years away and could not believe the transformation. "It was as if everyone had been sprinkled with idiot dust!" Some kind of mysterious national dumb-down would explain the ease with which the Republicans have managed to get so many people agitated about the nonexistent Social Security crisis -- at 82 percent ranked way above poverty and homelessness (71 percent) and racial justice (47 percent) in a list of urgent issues in a recent poll -- or about gay marriage, whose threat to heterosexual unions nobody so far has been able to articulate. Mass mental deterioration would explain, too, how so many Americans still believe the discredited premises of the Iraq War -- Saddam Hussein had WMD, was Osama's best friend, was behind 9/11. But even as a joke it doesn't explain the way we have come to accept as normal, or at least plausible, things that would have shocked us to our core only a little while ago. Michelle Malkin, a far-right absurdity, writes a book defending the internment of the Japanese in World War II, and before you know it Daniel Pipes, Middle East scholar and frequent op-ed commentator, is citing Malkin to support his proposals for racial profiling of Muslims. And he's got lots of company -- in a recent poll almost half of respondents agreed that the civil liberties of Muslims should be curtailed. Pipes's proposals in turn seem mild compared with the plans being floated by the Pentagon and the CIA for lifetime detention of terrorist suspects -- without charges, without lawyers, in a network of secret prisons around the globe. Kafkaesque doesn't begin to describe it -- at least Joseph K. had an attorney and the prisoner of "In the Penal Colony" got a sentence.

The thought-lite handling of the first few issues that she names may frustrate with their expected irksomeness and pretension, but by the end of the ramble, a light-hearted conservative will surely smile in appreciation of how dramatically liberals' world must seem to be falling apart. How crazy America must seem to those who've built an entire worldview on the denial of key organizing principles.

It's alright to be wrong, of course, but it's critically telling that Pollitt doesn't pause even for a moment — between blaming first Americans' stupidity and then their fear — to wonder whether she's the one who's missing something. Having not read her work more than incidentally, I won't speculate as to her intelligence, but there's a yellow powdery substance scattered between the lines of this particular column, and I think she gives it the proper name: "fear dust."

ADDENDUM:
For the sheer irony of it, I think somebody ought to submit the above paragraph from Pollitt to Andrew Sullivan for his Malkin Award.

Stepping Out to Charge Back In

Congrats to Will Ricci, of the NFRA of RI, for being named editor of the Rhode Island HQ pages of GOPUSA. The more conservatives in this state can reach beyond its borders, the better our chances of forcing change.

Will's got some blog-like posts of news from around Rhode Island, and he's in the process of updating the various local links. Be sure to express your opinion on his online poll asking about support for Chafee's reelection. (My response shouldn't be a surprise.)

And Never Shall They Meet

I share Bil Herron's consternation at not making the cut for the latest local-media dip into the blogosphere. Unfortunately, neither Anchor Rising nor Dust in the Light nor The Ocean State Blogger has Bil's obvious reasons to blame. No, in our case, it's not a lack of effort; it's just us — the price of being counterculturalists.

The only three blogs that Jen Senecal mentioned in her Providence Monthly piece were Providence Journal blogger Sheila Lennon (of course), woneffe ("a mix of urbanism, politics, and gay issues in and around Rhode Island, along with some wonderful photographs"), and The PRESSblog ("a source for marketing news, ideas, and ad reviews, all focused on the Rhode Island marketing scene"). With the exception of PRESSblog, which appears to be politically neutral, the common theme of all the others (including those to which woneffe links to "spread the wealth") is easy to spot.

Oh well. I suppose it's best, when working for change, not to be too cozy with the keepers of the status quo. Being a good sport, though, I will offer one bit of advice to the folks at Providence Monthly. If you're going to make some of your content available online, putting up the piece about things that are... online might be a good idea. I'm sure the folks at PRESSblog would agree.

The State of Literary Capitalism

On Friday, I went to Barnes & Noble in Middletown to see if the store had one or both of the magazines in which my work currently appears. I couldn't find any copies of Newport Life, and the two copies of National Review on the rack were two-issues old. Well, I just called to ask whether the new one had come in yet, and the associate with whom I spoke said he hadn't seen it. With the holidays and all, he told me, magazines don't receive a high priority.

He was very helpful, so I didn't get the impression that I was dealing with one of those retail clerks whom Jay Nordlinger calls "little suppressors" (after the bookstore chain The Little Professor; see the email at the end of this Impromptus for the archetype). Nonetheless, the young man on the phone implied that he, personally, would have seen any new issues, and yet I had to tell him what section to look in. (At least, that's how I took his question, "Have you ever been here before?")

More suspiciously, as he perused the shelves, he asked, "Do you mean ISR?"

"No, what's that?"

"The International Socialist Review."

This same store was the one at which I bought Andrew Sullivan's Virtually Normal some months ago while researching my NR piece. And oddly enough, the clerk who helped me that time looked none too comfortable standing at my side and scanning the hodgepodge of material — from erotic fiction to social science tomes — in the Gay & Lesbian section. (Silly theocon that I am, I had wasted my time searching the Politics & Government and Social Sciences sections.)

The Meaning of "Tolerance"

Each of two recent articles on the troubles in the Netherlands contained interesting quotes on the long-term impact of multiculturism. There is a warning for America in these words as they highlight the ongoing confusion over the meaning of "tolerance."

A quote in the first article said:

...tolerance became a pretext for not addressing problems...

A quote in the second article said:

We have been so tolerant of others' culture and religion, we are losing our own...Europe is losing itself...One day we will wake up, and it will be too late...

I looked up the definition of the word "tolerance" and it said:

sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own...the allowable deviation from a standard...

The definition of tolerance clearly states there are pre-existing standards, without which the very concept of tolerance has no significance. But multiculturism has led us into a world of relativism where there are no standards. And that means there is no way to define allowable deviations.

In a free and democratic society, we owe it to ourselves to openly debate what will be the appropriate standards and the allowable deviations from them that we will tolerate in our American society.

I hope we can conduct that debate in a context that keeps sight of the standards given to us through our Founding in the Declaration of Independence, the lessons learned over the entire history of America, and the natural law principles that have guided Western Civilization for centuries.

We owe it to our children and the future of America not to let the relativism of multiculturism result in any further dumbing down of our society based on the misguided thinking and ahistorical practices of the last forty years or so.

ADDENDUM:

Power Line has highlighted Mark Steyn's new comments on the "tolerance" debate with some updated stories, one of which is a tall tale. However, one of them is quite true and involves a now well-publicized story from our own state of Rhode Island, which Justin has written on here.

Our Declaration of Independence

This posting relates to a previous posting on the American Founding and also relates to Liberal Fundamentalism and The Naked Public Square Revisited, Parts I, II, and III.

Thanks to Power Line for referring to a 1926 speech by Calvin Coolidge on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If you ever have any doubt that certain apostles of liberal fundamentalism are actively attempting to rewrite our country's history, read the entire speech. In the meantime, here are some powerful excerpts:

There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity.

It was not because it proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history...

...Three very definite propositions were set out in [the Declaration's] preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed...

While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination...

It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world...

...when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live...

In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignity, the rights of man - these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in religious convictions...Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish...

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776..that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final...If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people...

In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people...The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guarantees, which even the government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government -- the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them. We hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction...The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty...

...We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it...We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed...

The speech connects to an excerpt from another Power Line posting:

Knowledge of American history holds the key to much of the current discussion of political issues, such as the ongoing liberal attack on Christian belief and on arguments premised on belief in God...Absent knowledge of American history, one would never know that the United States is founded on the basis of a creed, rather than on tribal or blood lines, in which God plays a prominent part. Absent knowledge of history generally, one would never know that this fact makes America unique.

What is the American creed?...The American creed is expressed with inspired concision in the words of the Declaration of Independence...

But does the Declaration have any legal status such that these words can be truly deemed to state the American creed? It does, although virtually no one seems to know it. In 1878 Congress enacted a revised version of the United States Code that included a new first section entitled "The Organic Laws of the United States."

The Code is Congress's official compilation of federal law; the organic laws of the United States are America's founding laws. First and foremost of the four organic laws of the United States is the Declaration of Independence...

Professor Jaffa [of the Claremont Institute] teaches us that the Declaration contains four distinct references to God: He is the author of the "laws of...God"; the "Creator" who "endowed" us with our inalienable rights; "the Supreme Judge of the world"; and "Divine Providence." Americans declared their independence, "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions."

The Declaration states the American creed, the creed that recognizes the source (Nature and Nature's God) of our rights.

The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part III

After pulling together the two previous postings of The Naked Public Square Revisited, Parts I & II, I returned home this weekend to find the December 27 issue of National Review with its cover article entitled "Secularism & Its Discontents." In the article, Ramesh Ponnuru offers some further insights into the debate about the public square.

Ponnuru reiterates how inappropriate name-calling has become the norm:

...most liberals, including religious ones, do find Christian conservatism dangerous in a way that makes it similar in principle, if not in virulence, to the Taliban...The idea that Christian conservatives and Islamofascists can be reasonably or fairly compared in this fashion is such a common-place that people who propound it often do not seem to think that they are saying anything provocative...

Putting things into perspective, Ponnuru notes:

My point...is to note that introducing nearly every one of these policies [of the religious Right] would merely turn the clock back to the late 1950's. That may be a very bad idea, but the America of the 1950's was not a theocracy.

America at the time of its Founding was, by contemporary standards, including contemporary conservative standards, shockingly illiberal...

At the same time, Ponnuru offers the following appropriate suggestion to religious conservatives:

To the extent that religious conservatives are jumping from policy disagreements to accusations of bigotry against some persons - and this does happen - they ought to stop. And while there is no constitutional requirement that people make political arguments in terms that can be understood by fellow citizens with different religious views, it is a reasonable request.

He then turns his attention to how liberals often twist the relationship between faith and reason in this debate:

The way liberals typically deploy the distinction between faith and reason in public-policy argument could also stand some interrogation. There are good reasons to think that it involves real unfairness to religious conservatives, or at least to their views.

Liberals tend to assume, without reflection, that the rational view of an issue is the one that most non-religious people take. The idea that a religious tradition could strengthen people's reason - could help them reach rationally sound conclusions they might not otherwise reach - rarely occurs to them...liberalism's general tendency is to identify reason with irreligion.

When you have read the likes of Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, it is hard not to find this reaction just plain annoying - not to mention just plain ignorant.

Ponnuru states the core problem in a way complementary to how Neuhaus did in the previous posting:

Liberalism's hymns to reason always end up truncating reason. They are pleas for open debate designed to rule things out of debate...Let us imagine a conservative who says that abortion should be illegal because it kills human beings. His liberal friend responds that this sort of theological talk is inadmissable in a democracy because it violates the rules of open debate. We can see that this liberal has misrepresented his friend's views and shut down the discussion - all in the name of reasoned argument. Yet that conversation happens all the time in our politics, and somehow we don't see it.

If I'm right about liberalism's instinctive reflexes, then contemporary liberalism has forfeited the creed's ancient claim to promote civil peace...But if liberal secularism amounts to the unwitting imposition of the views of an irreligious minority on a religious majority, then it hardly seems likely to foster social harmony. Nor has it.

Finally, Ponnuru offers a sobering thought on what this all means during a time when Americans face a dedicated and evil external foe:

Liberalism's confusions about church and state matter more now that we are in a war with actual theocrats, murderous ones. It is one thing to fight a war for religious freedom, pluralism, and modernity. It is another to fight a war for those things as liberals understand them...

The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part II

This posting is the second part of a discussion that began with an earlier posting and is related to two previous postings about liberal fundamentalism and the American Founding.

Richard John Neuhaus wrote a book entitled The Naked Public Square: Religion & Democracy in America. First published in 1984, it addressed societal trends and the philosophical issues underlying the religion/democracy debate in America. Here are some excerpts where he describes the problem:

Politics and religion are different enterprises...But they are constantly coupling and getting quite mixed up with one another. There is nothing new about this. What is relatively new is the naked public square. The naked public square is the result of political doctrine and practice that would exclude religion and religiously grounded values from the conduct of public business...

When religion in any traditional or recognizable form is excluded from the public square, it does not mean that the public square is in fact naked...

The truly naked public square is at best a transitional phenomenon. It is a vacuum begging to be filled. When the democratically affirmed institutions that generate and transmit values are excluded, the vacuum will be filled by the agent left in control of the public square, the state. In this manner, a perverse notion of the disestablishment of religion leads to the establishment of the state as church...

Our problems, then, stem in large part from the philosophical and legal effort to isolate and exclude the religious dimension of culture...only the state can..."lay claim to compulsive authority."...of all the institutions in societies, only religion can invoke against the state a transcendent authority and have its invocation seconded by "the people" to whom a democratic state is presumably accountable. For the state to be secured from such challenge, religion must be redefined as a private, emphatically not public, phenomenon. In addition, because truly value-less existence is impossible for persons or societies, the state must displace religion as the generator and bearer of values...

[T]he notion of the secular state can become the prelude to totalitarianism. That is, once religion is reduced to nothing more than privatized conscience, the public square has only two actors in it - the state and the individual. Religion as a mediating structure...is no longer available as a countervailing force to the ambitions of the state...

If law and polity are divorced from moral judgment...all things are permitted and...all things will be done...When in our public life no legal prohibition can be articulated with the force of transcendent authority, then there are no rules rooted in ultimacies that can protect the poor, the powerless and the marginal...

Politics is an inescapably moral enterprise. Those who participate in it are...moral actors. The word "moral" here...means only that the questions engaged [in politics] are questions that have to do with what is right or wrong, good or evil. Whatever moral dignity politics may possess depends upon its being a process of contention and compromise among moral actors, not simply a process of accomodation among individuals in pursuit of their interests. The conflict in American public life today, then, is not a conflict between morality and secularism. It is a conflict of moralities in which one moral system calls itself secular and insists that the other do likewise as the price of admission to the public arena. That insistence is in fact a demand that the other side capitulate...

The founding fathers of the American experiment declared certain truths to be self-evident and moved on from that premise. It is a measure of our decline into what may be the new dark ages that today we are compelled to produce evidence for the self-evident.

It is sobering to consider how rapid the decline in America has been, happening during our lifetime. For example, contrast today's status quo with this 1952 opinion by William O. Douglas who, as a not particularly religious man, wrote the following in a U.S. Supreme Court case entitled Zorach v. Clauson:

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. We guarantee the freedom to worship as one chooses. We make room for a variety of beliefs and creeds as the spiritual needs of man deem necessary. We sponsor an attitude on the part of government that shows no partiality to any one group and lets each flourish according to the zeal of its adherents and the appeal of its dogma. When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows in the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accomodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.

Finally, here are some additional thoughts from Neuhaus where he offers some guidance on how to understand and fix the problem:

One enters the public square, then, not as an anonymous citizen but as a person shaped by "other sources" that are neither defined by nor subservient to the public square. The public square is not a secular and morally sterilized space but a space for conversation, contention, and compromise among moral actors...compromise is an exercise of moral responsibility by persons who accept responsibility for sustaining the exercise that is called democracy...

One enters the democratic arena, then, as a moral actor. This must be insisted upon against those who view compromise as the antithesis of moral behavior. It must also be insisted upon against those who claim that moral judgment must be set aside before entering the public square...In this [latter] view, the assertion that a moral claim is an intrusion...an "imposition" upon a presumably value-free process. Morally serious people, however, cannot divide themselves so neatly...We do not have here an instance of moral judgment versus value-free secular reason. We have rather an instance of moralities in conflict. The notion of moralities in conflict is utterly essential to remedying the problems posed by the naked public square. Those who want to bring religiously based value to bear in public discourse have an obligation to "translate" those values into terms that are as accessible as possible to those who do not share the same religious grounding. They also have the obligation, however, to expose the myth of value-neutrality...

Neuhaus is now a Roman Catholic priest, a man known for publicly stating his deeply held religious beliefs. Yet, it is instructive to note how, through the use of reason that reaches out to all Americans, he carefully describes the issues we face here. In that way, he is being true to the principles of our Founding.

Americans who believe in liberty and self-government need to take responsibility for changing the course of our country's debate on this important issue. We need to approach this issue with greater clarity.

As we prepare for another new year, it is a worthy endeavor to contemplate how each of us can make our own individual contribution in 2005 to helping the land we love.

The Naked Public Square Revisited, Part I

This Christmas holiday season has reignited the public debate about the proper roles for church and state.

Why are so many Americans upset about what is going on? Consider the following:

Christmas has been sanitized in schools and public squares, in malls and parades...

"Those who think that the censoring of Christmas is a blue-state phenomenon need to consider what happened today in the Wichita [Kansas] Eagle," said William Donahue of the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

The Kansas newspaper ran a correction, he said, for mistakenly referring to a "Christmas Tree" rather than a "Community Tree" at the Wichita Winterfest celebration.

"It's time practicing Christians demanded to know from these speech-code fascists precisely who it is they think they are protecting [by] dropping the dreaded 'C-word'," Mr. Donahue said yesterday...

"People are tired of efforts to sanitize religious expression. This policy against even instrumental Christmas music in schools violates common sense and is neither necessary nor constitutional," Mr. Scott [of the Alliance Defense Fund] added...

Denver, for example, refused to allow a Christian church float in the city's holiday parade, because "direct religious themes" were not allowed. Homosexual American Indians, Chinese lion dancers and German folk dancers, however, were welcome...

School districts in Florida and New Jersey have banned Christmas carols altogether, and an "all-inclusive" holiday song program at a Chicago-area elementary school included Jewish and Jamaican songs, but no Christmas carols.

Meanwhile, a Kirkland, Wash., high-school principal nixed a production of "A Christmas Carol" because of Tiny Tim's prayer, "God bless us everyone," while neighboring libraries banned Christmas trees...

"Our Founding Fathers didn't intend to take religion out of the state. They took state out of religion," [said] Jim Finnegan.

We have seen similar issues arise in Cranston.

Unfortunately, however, the problem is much deeper and not limited to the Christmas season. As an article entitled "Declaration of Independence Banned" noted:

In the city of Cupertino, California, a fifth grade public school teacher at Stevens Creek School, Stephen Williams, has been prohibited by the principal from distributing the Declaration of Independence among other documents from the American Founding. Why? Because they mention God.

Things have truly gotten out of hand when American children are forbidden from reading our own Declaration of Independence. And, it shows how far certain people will go to enforce the new religion of secular intolerance. (See the Liberal Fundamentalism, Revisited posting for additional perspective on this intolerance.)

The same author continued:

Carried to its logical conclusion, the position staked out by modern courts would prevent not only any mention of God in the classroom, but would render teaching the natural rights principles of constitutional government unconstitutional...

...there is a concerted effort to drive God out of our schools and out of our public square...to remove constitutional limitations on government power, and, at the same time, replace moral, free, self-sufficient citizens with needy, subservient citizens dependent on government. Removing God from the American mind advances both goals.

Understanding that sound government and a free, moral society rest upon a belief in the "laws of nature and of nature's God," California passed a law in 1997 requiring public schools to teach the Declaration of Independence and other documents from the Founding period...

As my friend, John Eastman, said in the same article:

"Unfortunately, our courts have abandoned the original meaning of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, and what we are witnessing today is the logical consequence of a half-century of misguided jurisprudence."

This view of the world has serious implications for the American principle of self-government. Here are some further thoughts from an article entitled "Belief in God Underlies Self Government":

America's founders devised the world's most excellent constitution, but they never imagined that their handiwork would survive without the proper understanding of its foundations and purposes�

The ultimate cause of our political order, and the reason for its existence, is set forth with surpassing eloquence in the Declaration's Preamble:

"We hold these truths to be self evident-that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

This is the most revolutionary political doctrine in the history of the world...

But the radical nature of the Declaration consists not only in its revolutionary character but in its reliance on the authority of a divine Creator. The Declaration teaches that the authority of the people is prior to government, but that the rights of the people are the gift of God. Neither man nor government is the author of liberty. That honor belongs only to God...

It is true that America's founders were scrupulously neutral between the numerous religious sects that existed in their time. But it is not true that they were hostile to the God worshipped by all of them...

What is especially sinister about the relentless campaign to remove all public references to God is that it calls the nation's foundations needlessly into question. If there is no God, then there is no human freedom and there is no government by consent of the governed...

Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia,

"[C]an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?"

I will post shortly some excerpts from a powerful book which directly tackles this important issue of religion and democracy in America.

Liberal Fundamentalism, Revisited

Consider these quotes about the recently concluded election:

"Election results reflect a decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...Ignorance and blood lust have a long tradition...especially in red states...They know no boundaries or rules. [Bush and Cheney] are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant." Jane Smiley

"I am saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland." Article

"Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity?" Garry Wills

"...used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad..." Thomas Friedman

"W's presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark ages...a scary, paranoid, regressive reality." Maureen Dowd

These are just some examples of the heated and frequently over-the-top rhetoric by the left.

That ugliness and resulting polarization led me to dig out one of the most powerful editorials I have read in my adult life - and it speaks directly to the so-called Red versus Blue state phenomenon. Here are some excerpts:

We have been following the extensive theological commentary in the press on the subject of politics and religion in the current presidential campaign. It might not otherwise have occurred to us that so many editorialists and columnists harbored so many deep, pent-up opinions on religious worship, voluntary school prayer or Christian fundamentalism.

What we have been looking for but have so far missed in this great awakening of religious writing is a short sermon on the subject of liberal fundamentalism...we would like to offer a few thoughts on what has been far and away the most messianic religion in America the past two decades - liberal politics.

American liberalism has traditionally derived much of its energy from a volatile mixture of emotion and moral superiority. The liberal belief that one's policies would on balance accomplish something indisputably good generally made opposing arguments about shortcomings, costs or unintended consequences unpersuasive...

In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals...many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public policy issue that has come along in the past 15 years. The result has been liberal fundamentalism.

...Not surprisingly, this evangelical liberalism produced a response. Conservative groups - both secular and religious - were created, and they quite obviously made the political success of their adversaries more difficult. Liberals don't like that. So now, suddenly, we find all these politicians and columnists who are afraid someone might want to impose a particular point of view on them...

If some liberals are now afraid that certain Christian fundamentalists will reintroduce new forms of intolerance and excessive religious zeal into American political life, perhaps we should concede the possibility that they know what they're talking about. But they might also meditate on the current election and why there has been an apparent rightward shift in political sentiment in the U.S. It could be that a great many voters have taken a good look at the fundamentalists on the religious right and the fundamentalists on the political left and made up their minds about which poses the greater threat to their own private and public values.

Interesting perspective, isn't it? Doesn't it strike you as if the editorial was written on November 3, 2004, the day after the election? But, no, it wasn't written last month or even this year. Rather, the Wall Street Journal published that editorial entitled "Liberal Fundamentalism" on September 13, 1984.

Unfortunately, liberal fundamentalism continues to actively strip naked the traditional public square and replace it with a secular absolutism. Another editorial discussed recent actions against the Boy Scouts and Catholic Charities by noting:

What's going on here is an effort by liberal activists and their judiciary enablers to turn one set of personal mores into a public orthodoxy from which there can be no dissent, even if that means trampling the First Amendment. Any voluntary association that doesn't comply - the same little platoons once considered the bedrock of American freedom - will be driven from the public square. Meet the new face of intolerance.

This ideological intolerance is not the historical face of America. It does not reflect the principles of the Declaration of Independence. And it is not the practices of most Americans today, including many principled liberals and conservatives.

But still the question remains: Where will we go from here as a country? No one should doubt that this is a battle for the future of our country and it requires active engagement by all of us. History from recent decades shows that the apostles of liberal fundamentalism are unrelenting in their self-righteousness and intolerance of any opposing world view. We are fighting what Thomas Sowell has labeled the "vision of the [self-] anointed."

As we do battle with this determined foe, I would offer you three quotes for reflection and encouragement.

The first quote reminds us of the natural law principles articulated by our Founders and why that leads to a crucial belief in limited government:

...natural law jurisprudence represents the greatest threat to the liberal desire to replace limited, constitutional government with a regulatory-welfare state of unlimited powers.

...the principle that our rights come not from government but from a "Creator" and "the laws of nature and of nature's God," as our Declaration of Independence says, and that the purpose and power of government should therefore be limited to protecting our natural, God-given rights.

The left understands that if it is to succeed, these principles of constitutional government must be jettisoned, or at least redefined...the founders' natural-law defense of constitutional government is fatal to liberalism's goal...

...Woodrow Wilson, for example, insisted that unlike the physical universe, the political universe contains no immutable principles or laws. 'Government...is a living thing...'

From a liberal view, liberty cannot be a natural right, protected by a government of limited powers, because there are no natural rights...Instead, 'the state...is the creator of liberty.'

...The liberal critique of the Constitution has been repeated so long and with such intensity that it has become orthodoxy in our law schools, courtrooms and legislative halls...

The size, scope and purposes of our government are no longer anchored in and limited by our Constitution...The American people need to be reminded of the source of their rights and persuaded that limited government is good; that the principles of the Constitution - which are the natural-law principles of the Declaration of Independence - are timeless, not time-bound; that without those principles, the noble ends set forth in the Constitution's preamble can never be achieved.

The second quote comes from Thomas Jefferson, as mentioned in Chapter 6 of Richard John Neuhaus' book, The Naked Public Square:

...Jefferson, however, had no illusions that democracy had resolved the religious question by establishing "the separation of church and state." Consider, for example, his well-known reflection on the immorality of slavery:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?...

In short, Jefferson understood that that no constitution or written law is strong enough to defend rights under attack. Their "only firm basis" is in their being perceived as transcendent gift.

The final quote comes from George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address as his Presidency was ending. It speaks to the importance of religion and morality:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them...Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The very nature of public debate on a controversial issue in a democracy is "messy" and that messiness makes the debate appear inefficient or even ineffective. But that is because it takes time to build a consensus among citizens across our great country. For the survival of our country, we must find that consensus over time by helping people rediscover the importance of limited government and how both morality and religion are crucial building blocks.

I believe we will achieve such an outcome by appealing to Americans across the political spectrum who hold a deep-seated belief in the right of individual Americans to live a life of principled freedom among their family, friends, church and community - without interference from fundamentalists of any persuasion.

Liberal Fundamentalism, Revisited

Consider these quotes about the recently concluded election:

"Election results reflect a decision of the right wing to cultivate and exploit ignorance in the citizenry...Ignorance and blood lust have a long tradition...especially in red states...They know no boundaries or rules. [Bush and Cheney] are predatory and resentful, amoral, avaricious, and arrogant." Jane Smiley

"I am saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland." Article

"Where else do we find fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity?" Garry Wills

"...used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad..." Thomas Friedman

"W's presidency rushes backward, stifling possibilities, stirring intolerance, confusing church with state, blowing off the world, replacing science with religion, and facts with faith. We're entering another dark ages...a scary, paranoid, regressive reality." Maureen Dowd

These are just some examples of the heated and frequently over-the-top rhetoric by the left.

That ugliness and resulting polarization led me to dig out one of the most powerful editorials I have read in my adult life � and it speaks directly to the so-called Red versus Blue state phenomenon. Here are some excerpts:

We have been following the extensive theological commentary in the press on the subject of politics and religion in the current presidential campaign. It might not otherwise have occurred to us that so many editorialists and columnists harbored so many deep, pent-up opinions on religious worship, voluntary school prayer or Christian fundamentalism.

What we have been looking for but have so far missed in this great awakening of religious writing is a short sermon on the subject of liberal fundamentalism...we would like to offer a few thoughts on what has been far and away the most messianic religion in America the past two decades - liberal politics.

American liberalism has traditionally derived much of its energy from a volatile mixture of emotion and moral superiority. The liberal belief that one's policies would on balance accomplish something indisputably good generally made opposing arguments about shortcomings, costs or unintended consequences unpersuasive...

In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals...many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public policy issue that has come along in the past 15 years. The result has been liberal fundamentalism.

...Not surprisingly, this evangelical liberalism produced a response. Conservative groups - both secular and religious - were created, and they quite obviously made the political success of their adversaries more difficult. Liberals don't like that. So now, suddenly, we find all these politicians and columnists who are afraid someone might want to impose a particular point of view on them...

If some liberals are now afraid that certain Christian fundamentalists will reintroduce new forms of intolerance and excessive religious zeal into American political life, perhaps we should concede the possibility that they know what they're talking about. But they might also meditate on the current election and why there has been an apparent rightward shift in political sentiment in the U.S. It could be that a great many voters have taken a good look at the fundamentalists on the religious right and the fundamentalists on the political left and made up their minds about which poses the greater threat to their own private and public values.

Interesting perspective, isn�t it? Doesn�t it strike you as if the editorial was written on November 3, 2004, the day after the election? But, no, it wasn�t written last month or even this year. Rather, the Wall Street Journal published that editorial entitled "Liberal Fundamentalism" on September 13, 1984.

Unfortunately, liberal fundamentalism continues to actively strip naked the traditional public square and replace it with a secular absolutism. Another editorial discussed recent actions against the Boy Scouts and Catholic Charities by noting:

What's going on here is an effort by liberal activists and their judiciary enablers to turn one set of personal mores into a public orthodoxy from which there can be no dissent, even if that means trampling the First Amendment. Any voluntary association that doesn't comply - the same little platoons once considered the bedrock of American freedom - will be driven from the public square. Meet the new face of intolerance.

This ideological intolerance is not the historical face of America. It does not reflect the principles of the Declaration of Independence. And it is not the practices of most Americans today, including many principled liberals and conservatives.

But still the question remains: Where will we go from here as a country? No one should doubt that this is a battle for the future of our country and it requires active engagement by all of us. History from recent decades shows that the apostles of liberal fundamentalism are unrelenting in their self-righteousness and intolerance of any opposing world view. We are fighting what Thomas Sowell has labeled the "vision of the [self-] anointed."

As we do battle with this determined foe, I would offer you three quotes for reflection and encouragement.

The first quote reminds us of the natural law principles articulated by our Founders and why that leads to a crucial belief in limited government:

...natural law jurisprudence represents the greatest threat to the liberal desire to replace limited, constitutional government with a regulatory-welfare state of unlimited powers.

...the principle that our rights come not from government but from a "Creator" and "the laws of nature and of nature's God," as our Declaration of Independence says, and that the purpose and power of government should therefore be limited to protecting our natural, God-given rights.

The left understands that if it is to succeed, these principles of constitutional government must be jettisoned, or at least redefined...the founders' natural-law defense of constitutional government is fatal to liberalism's goal...

...Woodrow Wilson, for example, insisted that unlike the physical universe, the political universe contains no immutable principles or laws. 'Government...is a living thing...'

From a liberal view, liberty cannot be a natural right, protected by a government of limited powers, because there are no natural rights...Instead, 'the state...is the creator of liberty.'

...The liberal critique of the Constitution has been repeated so long and with such intensity that it has become orthodoxy in our law schools, courtrooms and legislative halls...

The size, scope and purposes of our government are no longer anchored in and limited by our Constitution...The American people need to be reminded of the source of their rights and persuaded that limited government is good; that the principles of the Constitution - which are the natural-law principles of the Declaration of Independence - are timeless, not time-bound; that without those principles, the noble ends set forth in the Constitution's preamble can never be achieved.

The second quote comes from Thomas Jefferson, as mentioned in Chapter 6 of Richard John Neuhaus' book, The Naked Public Square:

...Jefferson, however, had no illusions that democracy had resolved the religious question by establishing "the separation of church and state." Consider, for example, his well-known reflection on the immorality of slavery:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?...

In short, Jefferson understood that that no constitution or written law is strong enough to defend rights under attack. Their "only firm basis" is in their being perceived as transcendent gift.

The final quote comes from George Washington's 1796 Farewell Address as his Presidency was ending. It speaks to the importance of religion and morality:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them...Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The very nature of public debate on a controversial issue in a democracy is "messy" and that messiness makes the debate appear inefficient or even ineffective. But that is because it takes time to build a consensus among citizens across our great country. For the survival of our country, we must find that consensus over time by helping people rediscover the importance of limited government and how both morality and religion are crucial building blocks.

I believe we will achieve such an outcome by appealing to Americans across the political spectrum who hold a deep-seated belief in the right of individual Americans to live a life of principled freedom among their family, friends, church and community � without interference from fundamentalists of any persuasion.

Like Christians from the Catacombs

While leading the way to the Christmas tree that my family had tagged a month before, I was amused by the searching look from the young man with the saw when he alluded to some volunteer work that he'd recently done with Rock the Vote and I said nothing. The other day, a solicitor for a charity called and, in attempting to find a way around my "just can't this year," started making jokes about how President Bush will be inaugurated but wasn't "reelected."

Spending time with a new acquaintance, today, I smiled inwardly at our Dance of the Issues, whereby two people gradually unveil their views on particular topics — the more closely bounded, the better — in lieu of the kind of shorthand that suffices when one is confident of holding the majority opinion. Go to church? Yes. Michael Moore? Fool. Iraq? Media bias. Second Amendment? "Bear" means "carry."

These various anecdotes bring to mind a recent Ben Stein piece:

The man at the Christmas tree tent in Malibu kept winking at me and nodding when no one else was looking. I smiled and kept looking at the trees. (In Malibu, we Jews have Christmas trees.) Finally, he motioned to me to come over to is table. He cupped his hand over his mouth and took my hand. "We won," he said. "We won." ...

This is the way it is here. We meet in smoky places. We give the high sign, we nod knowingly. We are like members of the Maquis in Occupied France. Or early Christians emerging from the catacombs in Caligula's Rome. We are the GOP in Hollywood, and on the West Side of L.A. The culture here is so dominantly left-wing, PC, vegan, hate-America that many of us feel we have to behave as if we were underground.

My experiences here in Rhode Island aren't to the level of Stein's, but then again, I'm not a public figure.

(Via Blog from the Core)

Honoring The Land We Love

With the election over, we once again turn our attention to the future. That includes preparing for a new group of government officials to take office.

Therefore it seems timely to reflect on the principles of the American Founding, as we hope these principles will guide both our lawmakers and us.

It is a common practice for some people to focus on America�s past or current failings. Some even go so far as to claim The American Project is a failure or illegitimate because of these imperfections.

Contrast that world view with the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., leader of one of the great moral endeavors of our lifetime. We all agree that slavery was a failing in the early years of the Republic. We further agree that unequal treatment under the law in a post-slavery world was another failing. Yet, when faced with the latter challenge, Dr. King successfully led