I think the Style Editor should apply to this.

And the Winner for the Worst Piece of Political Analysis Is…

Every once in a blue moon I come across a piece that fully captures the advanced state of decay at the heart of the World’s Oldest Political Party. It truly is difficult to know where to start with something like this. Its errors are so many and so fulsome, its analysis so riddled with the deepest sort of wishful thinking. It is like a dispatch from a parallel universe in which Constanza’s law (you remember, right? Just do the opposite of whatever your instincts tell you) has been suspended. In this universe bad instincts are followed to the hilt. It is like a lunatic at the wheel of school bus headed for a cliff saying, “Seriously, I've seen these things FLY!” He has failed to absorb the lesson of the Clinton presidency: the people will vote for Democrats only when they work as hard as they can to pretend they don't believe a word of party doctrine.

What is especially hard to believe about this drivel is that the guy who wrote is actually paid to provide strategic political advice to Democrat candidates for government. Oprah Winfrey-like, Al Quinlin suggests that the real problem with Democrats is that they have lost touch with their inner Democrat. The public, he says, hungers for “authenticity” and will vote for it in droves if only Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, et. al. will give it to them. (Yes, yes, give it to them, in the words of H.L. Mencken, good and hard.)

One can only hope that this piece is making the rounds on the DailyKos and has found its way into the reading folders of all the Democrat higher-ups in town. If the Republicans had a mole writing policy at the DNC they could not have written a more favorable strategy.

The Postmodern Moment

As Peter Leithart observes:

Japan beats Cuba in the world baseball competition. According to the NPR report, during the final game, everyone in the stands - Japanese, Cubans, American spectators - does the wave and dances to YMCA by the Village People. After Japan wins, you can hear "We Are the Champions" in the background.

The world comes together to play an American sport, and everyone is unified by American pop culture.

Welcome to postmodernism.

It's almost a caricature of postmodernism, in fact, save that it happened. And damn it, not a single Cuban defection as of this AM.

Barone il Pezzonovante vs. E.J. Dionne, The Black Knight

Michael Barone has some good stuff up on his blog. Here's a gentle tweak at the very tweakable E.J. Dionne, who essentially wrote a column defending progressives against the charge that they do very well in places with very rich people. Barone has some substantive points, but let me cut to the nyah-nyah-nyah bit:

Dionne seems to be uncomfortable also with the idea that the Democrats depend heavily on elite rich voters who are out of touch with Middle America. He points out, accurately, that that's not the entire picture. But if he's not defensive about Democrats' rich elites, why bother to write the column?

I respond: because most of Dionne's columns come out of defensiveness. Heck, he writes entire books out of a sort of weird defensiveness. [Oh, how Dr. Potomac and I chuckled when after the 1994 Congressional elections, ol' E.J. came out with his book entitled They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era. Obviously he had begun to write the book after the 1992 elections, only to have events catch up with him. Dr. Potomac, as I recall, suggested the subtitle "But, Actually, They're Deader". I thought about "Shoot'em Again to Make Sure They're Dead." Maybe E.J.'s writing a sequel: "They're Not Dead, Just Resting." Or, "They're Not Dead, They're Just in a Vegetative State." That's E.J. Dionne: The Black Knight of the American Punditocracy, with a writing schedule based on wish-fulfillment.]

•We often (OK, maybe just me and the Style Editor) talk about the great good Godblog Get Religion...not that it needs any advertising, but Terry Mattingly has a good post up on coverage of Ave Maria University, which almost inevitably is called Pizza U., thanks to the deep pockets of its patron, signor, and podesta, Tom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza. Comments, Doc C.?

• Confessing Evangelical has a post up on "Lent for Evangelicals". Frankly this is something that the Style Editor can really dig her canines into, so I will leave comments on the post to her.

Cherie Blair, et. al, v. The People

Theodore Dalrymple at City Journal is one of my all-time favorite writers. For those not familiar with work, Dalrymple is an English psychiatrist who spent his entire professional career working in the National Health Service seeing to the mental mental health needs of the British underclass. He makes a compelling argument in his best known book, Life at the Bottom, that the source of squalor and misery among Britain’s poor is a deeply engrained sense of victimhood combined with a highly developed ethic of relativism. As always, while those at the top, the “mandarins” he calls them, make a good living off of the behavioral problems of poor, English society as a whole continues to coarsen and the conditions of the poor themselves spiral downward. Life at the bottom means living with the burden of bad ideas conceived at the top.

The attached article has a hall of mirrors quality to it. Cherie Blair, Esq. is representing two Muslim girls who are suing for the right to wear headcoverings and other traditional Muslim dress to school. He points that Mrs. Blair has confused her categories. Since the long robes and head coverings are traditionally Muslim, Blair assumes that British society, by denying them the opportunity to wear those clothes to school, is engaging in cultural hegemony and oppression. The reality, Dalrymple says, is the opposite: the clothes themselves are symbols and tools of misogyny and oppression which Muslim men use to try to keep Muslim women barefoot, married at 12 and pregnant. As bad as those conditions are, the offerings of British society are equally bad: non-Muslims enjoy great freedom but increasingly convert freedom to a kind of license that is making life in many British cities intolerable. The trick, he says, is to hold freedom and discipline in balance. It is a trick the Muslim world has yet to learn and that the West,including Cherie Blair, is quickly forgetting.

David Warren

I can't really add to this; I can only commend it.

I’m sitting here icing my flab, having just returned from a most EXCELLENT time exercising my 2nd Amendment rights with some of my favorite mad libertarian and conservative running dogs, and I wish to pronounce that the heart of Conservatism is all about guns.

No? Oh well.

Is Dreher asking some good questions? He may well be. But my point simply is tone matters. Tone always matters. Tone can ruin the best questions and elevate dreck. Perhaps this is not how it should be, but it is how it is.

I work with some impassioned social conservatives, who are very upset about the state of the world. They want it to change, and they write all sorts of things to this effect. But in their op-eds and whatnot they don’t persuade. They bludgeon. And somehow this makes them not very persuasive.

The Ombudsman will be the first to tell you that tact is not one of my gifts. I fully embrace that there is a time and place for bludgeoning, but not every time and place is for bludgeoning, and it seems to me that the Crunchy Cons would do well to remember that.

Also Dr. P has a point: this is all possibly less interesting than Battlestar Galactica, which you have to admit is a frightening thought.

Meanwhile back here in Bobo Paradise, I offer this gem of an article from Thursday’s WaPo.

Also far more interesting to me than the Crunchy book is this one. I intend to give it a whirl after I finish with Flashman on the March.

We are amused.

Confronted with "Birkinstocked Burkeans," the Ombudsman is luke warm and thinks it will be a good-intentioned but ultimately fruitless attempt to reinfuse conservatism with orthodoxy. His sibling in crime, the Style Editor, is red hot with contempt and sees the entire project as self-righteous, preachy, and narcissistic. Which leaves me to play the foil and, yes, the curmudgeon.

I freely admit, after reading Crunchy Cons this past week, that there is a disingenuous element at play, claiming not to condemn others for living a less-than crunchy life but all the while asking how anyone could think one way and live another. I did think a better title would have been Look, Not Everyone Can Live Like This, But Shame On You, You Should. The book does make one feel guilty at times, and I think in many ways that is what Dreher wants. I'll leave the hand-wringing about self-righteousness to others on this site, however.

In our huff at being called out for not living life the right way, we should not lose sight at the book's broader purpose, as the O-man rightly suggested: reinjecting orthodoxy into American conservatism. By orthodoxy, Dreher means the intellectual foundations of the modern conservative movement found most readily in Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and others. He is making the direct charge that conservatism, now subsumed within the Republican Party, has drifted from its moorings. Once waving the banner of tradition, particularity, localism, and community, it now mouths all the modern platitudes about progress, development, globalization, and multiculturalism (resistence is futile!). Conservatives once shed tears when fields and old neighborhoods were bulldozed for renewal and housing projects; now they shed tears of joy when a new chain store opens offering toilet paper at bargain prices.

There is something to this charge. Too many Republicans think lowering tax rates is the heart of conservatism. The party bears virtually no resemblence to the themes explored in Kirk's 1953 Conservative Mind or to Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences and Visions of Order. Now if conservatives are no longer grounded here, in the fertile soil that gave them birth, then where are they now grounded? What is the 2006 conservative philosophy? I'm not sure it has one. Traditionalists (of which Dreher counts himself) cling to Kirk and company, the "others" (what to call these people?) cling to whom? Our Big Government conservatism, if there is such a thing, looks more like Woodrow Wilson -- spend and regulate at home, and make the world safe for democracy.

Another question -- is this spat between CCs and "the others" the old neo-paleo fight under new ownership?

Anyhow, it is true, dear fellow editors, that I liked the book and thought its broader question an important one to ask. Because if Dreher's questions are right (and I think they are) and his answers are right (I think they are, in part), then modern day conservatism is a body with no mind.

Those who know the Style Editor well can tell you that her closely held ambition is that one day after I make sufficient dosh to support this scheme, I will own a farm where I would raise rare breed animals and heirloom plants, for the purpose of preserving their genetic pool for future generations. I even have all of my breeds picked out and happily list them for interested parties, who generally become rapidly uninterested by the time I start comparing the merits of the Large Black vs. the Mulefoot hogs.

The Style Editor she shops regularly at the local farmer’s market, only eats sausages and scrapple made from contented pigs by local producers, and buys most of her bread from local bakers. She has warm, fond memories of the small farmer and his wife who had the next property over when she was a child—it was there that the Style Editor learned to milk a cow—and thinks they were the salt of the earth. I have been known to wax eloquent on the topic of native plants vs. invasive species. If I had children, I would be a stay at home mother. (I’m not sure this counts though as that would be motivated by pure selfishness. I find the crumb crusher set highly entertaining and watching them develop is simply fascinating.) I even like to make my own granola.

So what is my opinion of the ‘crunchy cons’ dear reader? It verges so near extreme dislike that I think I will have to go drop some dollars in the penitential Lenten alms jar for thoughts unbecoming to a Christian.

Every time I read the actual Crunchy Con blog I feel a serious need to wash the sanctimony off me. I am happy to report that this blog provides the needed rinsing and also present a nice précis of how I view this group with much more humor and accuracy than I can muster.

However, I do not think the Crunchy Cons are hypocritical, a charge too easily tossed about in these heady days. I think they actually do practice what they preach. Thus, I would term them pharisaical. There they are in the front of the temple saying, now if you only did this, this and this, then God or Russell Kirk would love you like he loves us because we do all those things. It is hardly surprising. Their problem of is the problem of prosletyzing any creed that ultimately depends upon the law, and, man, do those Crunchies have laws! You can’t move for breaking them. It’s a problem that becomes even more exacerbated when the law is not a divinely instituted one, but one made up and maintained by man and apparently radically altered depending upon whim.

The more I read from them, the more I view them as the Objectivists of the Conservative movement. I remember having an interesting conversation once with a chap at a party who held the position that the Objectivists are the mystics of the Libertarians. It was a good observation. The Objectivists aren’t really all that objective. For all their claims of logic, they really do believe that they have a special truth revealed to them by the goddess Rand. They will themselves worthy of her; they are the chosen.

Likewise, the crunchy cons apparently have gotten the secret word via Russell Kirk, Wendell Berry, and Jimmy Carter and will by these practices make themselves worthy of—well—God truth be told. But as they say it’s not necessary that you believe in God to be a Crunchy Con—although it does seem awfully useful, just as it’s awfully useful to be an atheist if you’re going to be an Objectivist—then it would be accurate to say it will make you worthy of True Conservatism, however they feel about defining it that day.

Now I am more sympathetic to mysticism in Christianity than a good Lutheran girl ought to be. (Bunnie Diehl heaves a great sigh of blended pain and exasperation and starts calling around to schedule an intervention.) And I confess to having a profound admiration and respect for several mystics in the history of the church. But for all the press, mystics are human too, and there are some right stinkers among them, people whom you look at and say, “By golly if this mysticism stuff is true, it is also true that God uses every vehicle for it, which frankly is a relief to the rest of us. For’ard front and center, Margery Kempe!”

Have you read Margery Kempe? The Style Editor has, twice, once as a mere strippling of about 14 and once in college, and I look forward to never having to read her again. Both times I read Margery Kempe I was seized by a powerful sensation that coursed through my body and took control of my senses: I wanted to turn her over my knee and spank her with my hairbrush.

The Crunchy Cons remind me vividly of Margery Kempe. This is a pity for their “movement” for while the Margery has her ardent supporters—the Style Editor notes that the Ombudsman was a Kempe supporter when he read her—she also turns a lot of people off. When taking the mystic path, it is a far better practice to follow the advice of St. Francis, “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.” then shrilly proclaiming your virtue and condemning others via the Internet.

As we Lutherans like to say, “We have this one funny idea called the doctrine of vocation and this other funny idea known as the freedom of the Christian. We think that if you stick to these ideas, we will live the life that God meant for us to live on earth. Now these won’t be the perfect lives God actually meant for us to live, of course, because this here is a fallen world, and we’ll fall off the wagon a lot because we’re a poor, miserable sinners, and also we’ve got to watch that cheap grace, because that’s a great big stumbling block, you betcha. But we keep trying because it’s the least we can do for Someone who loves us so much, and we know that in His love, He will pick us up and stick us back on the wagon even if we’re going in the opposite direction. And don’t get any ideas that we’re better than everyone else, because we’re not. If our neighbor has fallen off the wagon, don’t, for goodness sake, prose on about how great it is to be on the wagon and not in the mud like our neighbor. Let’s get down and help the poor man and stick him in the middle of the wagon for a bit until his dizziness passes. Give him some bread and wine; that should help him feel stronger. Whoops, there goes the Style Editor again. Someone throw her a line!” (Bunnie Diehl relaxes and wonders if she can scale back the intervention to a mere one-on-one counseling session.)

An Orthodox priest once pithily observed about fasting, ‘Keep your eyes on your own plate.’ The Crunchy Cons would do well to follow this advice and keep their eyes on theirs.

Crunchy Cons

It is with no little trepidation that I mention the words above. If you have been following the conservative blogosphere, you know that "Crunchy Cons" is the title of a new book by Rod Dreher, and a new blog over at big-blog behemoth NRO.

I have some trepidation because the Doc tells me he has bought the book, and likes it; and the Style Editor has been fuming to me about these darn crunchy cons. Words to that effect. So it seems like the perfect thing to be talking about on a blog!

My initial take, to get things rolling, is that when some of these Crunchy Cons talk to much about lifestyle issues, I am automatically uninterested. Discussing "lifestyles" is all too post-modern, and unserious. But, insofar as it is serious, it seems a poorly named attempt to reorient American conservatism away from its love affair with Libertarianism and Populism. (The internet ain't exactly the place to do it, insofar as it is a perfect expression of both strains of American thought and culture...But let that pass.) As a serious project, it is trying to reinject Orthodoxy into Conservatism. The two are of course not synonymous: David Hume was one of the greatest Conservative thinkers, ever. Hence the sense that Rod Dreher's Crunchy-Con manifesto is Russell Kirk, a little Wendell Berry, shaken together with John Paul II. (Note that just about all of the commentators on the Crunchy Con blog are better known for their writings on Christianity than on Conservatism.) Myself, I cannot stand too much Wendell Berry, but he's a lot more substantive and truthful than Ayn Rand.

Naturally this effort is probably doomed to failure, not merely through poor execution, but also because Populism is just too strong. Me, I like the people fine; I just want to end the direct election of Senators. I would certainly prefer to be governed by the first 500 names in the Cambridge, MA phone directory than the entire faculty of Harvard; but I would also like, in that case, there to be a system of judicial review and frequent elections so I could throw the bums Abramovsky, Aaron, and Babbit out.

Canadian Bellicosity...It's Not Just an Oxymoron

Here at Dr. Curmudgeon & Company, we think a lot of David Warren, Canadian writer, savant, and columnist for the Ottawa Citizen Now he goes and writes a bellicose, chest-thumping militaristic Canadianesque column about what a fine damn bunch of soldiers the Canadians have in Afghanistan:

I am so damn proud of our Canadian guys, in Afghanistan. They have taken over a dangerous mission, and they are up to it. Our Kandahar detachment does not consist of “peacekeepers”. A person must have his brains scrambled for breakfast to think it does. For the peace is being imposed. Our guys are not “honest, impartial middlemen” between the Taliban savages and the elected government of Afghanistan. We are there to serve the latter by eliminating the former. It is a kill or be killed proposition. We are there to protect the common people; and therefore to kill the common enemy.

Well, yarr and hoo-ha to that, or whatever the Princess Pat's say (that would be Princess Patricia's Light Infantry Regiment; no jokes, please, their snipers have now set records for distance, if you see what I mean). If you're going to be accused of being a chickenhawk or armchair generalist, then you might as well fire the entire battery, hi-explosive shells, time on target.

Zinging the Pres

Those crafty devils. The House majority, long thought of as a robot army for the President, struck back today on the ports deal. The emergency supplemental appropriations bill, jammed full of money for Iraq and our other war zone, Lousiana, is a must-have for the President. The House is prepared to give the President what he wants on Iraq and Louisiana so long as the backbench gets its pound of flesh: no DPW ports management deal. This may be the first evidence that the House is under new management; that’s just the kind of clever, majority-saving thought Leader Boehner might come up with. We could do with a bit more of that kind of thing in the coming months only with guns trained on the opposition instead of the President.

Revenge as a Cold Dish

The Court’s (unanimous) ruling this week that law schools accepting federal funds must allow ROTC recruiters on campus is a matter of the things coming around after they go around. During my early years in Washington, and long before I made the intellectual and spiritual leap to conservatism, I lived through a little episode called the Civil Rights Restoration Act. In this undertaking, Congress reversed a Supreme Court ruling which held that a small liberal arts college in Illinois, Grove City, was not required to adhere to Title IX anti-sex discrimination policies just because its students received federal student loans and grants. The legal theory of the Court was that the aid flowed to the individuals rather than the institution and, therefore, the school had not received direct federal funds and was not subject to federal regulation. Congress passed legislation to override the Court’s ruling which was subsequently vetoed by President Reagan. Congress then overrode the veto attaining full victory over its nemesis, Grove City College, which although the Supreme Court said it had never actually discriminated was now legally barred from actions it hadn’t contemplated.

The Robert’s Court this week applied the gander’s sauce to the goose. The Court held that a group of law schools that had refused access to the ROTC because of the military's “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was a violation of the Soloman amendment which requires that institutions of higher education receiving federal support, including via student loans and grants, must open their campuses to the ROTC. This reversal of fortune is a petard the liberals never expected to be hoisted by. The sheer outrageousness of the idea that if a right-thinking (i.e. politically liberal) person takes federal money they have to play by federal rules! Forget about rights, laws of the universe are being violated here: liberal policy preferences are always constitutional and if they aren’t then just change the damn Constitution.

The Court reminded the law schools that they had a number of choices: they could change their ROTC policies or they could discontinue taking federal money. Which, by the way, is what Grove City College did going so far as to set up its own student loan operation with PNC Bank which offers loans on terms that are competitive with the federal student loan program.

I must say, all this comeuppance and innovation is rather invigorating, isn’t it?

I know we poo-pooed the CPAC GOP presidential list a few weeks ago, saying there were more candidates out there and that George Allen is a phantom front-runner. Well, add these guys to the growing list, says the Union-Leader:

Mike Huckabee
George Pataki
Chuck Hagel

[insert snore here]

Man, I can't get enough of this ports deal. It reminds me that I actually really am a conservative...because, sometimes, groups of people do really stupid things, despite all this "hive-intelligence" nonsense. Sometimes, as "Publius" points out ad nauseum, the health of the republic requires a check upon the unbridled passions of the mob.

But, enough about the United States Senate. Here are some of James Lilek's most recent thoughts on the ports matter...he tries to tie together What is Now Known:

Perhaps you’re confused by the so-called “Ports Deal” flap, which is rapidly reaching “imbroglio” status. At least in the Italian papers. Let us recap.

A British firm with the quaint and bygone name of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation company which controlled some American ports, and staffed the docks with Beefeaters and fierce Gurka soldiers who shot intruders on sight. They sold their interests to a company run by someone named Ladina Bin Osam, located in the fictional nation of “Dubai,” which is actually located in a PO box in Tehran. The company immediately announced plans to rechristen the docks “Martyr’s Gangways” and convert all cargo ships into troop transports that would fling plague-infected suicide bombers from off shore by means of catapults. Supporters of the deal point out that “Dubai,” which is how “Dubya” is pronounced in Arabic, is actually a great ally of the US, , despite the fact that the country’s seal shows the Twin Towers on fire, with the words “Bingo!” written below in elegant script. Pressed for comment, President Bush noted that critics should “wad up a sock and swallow it,” and that he would veto any attempt to veto the deal – unless it included $903 billion in additional spending, in which case, let’s talk.

Yeah, that's more or less it. I'll miss the Beefeaters, with those funny hats and cute little halberds...

Taking the Long(man) View

Last week I referenced a piece by Mark Steyn on the potential consequences of falling birth rates in the West. Today, Foreign Policy offers a somewhat different and, from a conservative perspective, more hopeful analysis of the issue. Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation argues that since populations with more patriarchal views on family tend to reproduce at a higher rate than social segments with liberal or modernist views, societies will inevitably become more conservative. You cannot pass along values to children that you don’t have. Liberals are selecting themselves out of the social gene pool.

Longman says:

[In] the post-World War II era, nearly all segments of modern societies married and had children. Some had more than others, but the disparity in family size between the religious and the secular was not so large, and childlessness was rare. Today, by contrast, childlessness is common, and even couples who have children typically have just one. Tomorrow’s children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents’ values, as always happens. But when they look around for fellow secularists and counterculturalists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.

This is a somewhat more nuanced and more developed version of the argument that James Taranto at Opinion Journal has been making for sometime now about what he calls the "Roe effect": people who believe in abortion have abortions; those that don’t, don’t. The net result is that every year there are more more people who are likely to oppose abortion rights and fewer to support that right. As Longman says, the ruling in Roe could very well turn out to be a Phyrric victory -- in more ways than one.

NPR: My Constant Companion

I just can’t get enough of the agitprop the flows forth from the reports of National Public Radio. Yesterday, that bastion of anti-capitalist business news, Marketplace, ran a piece on Strapped, a book that claims to unpack, explain and remedy (or at least offer a remedy) for the economic bind that many 20- and 30-somethings claim to find themselves in. According to the interview, today’s yuppies are caught in a bind between their student loans and a flat job market and finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. At one point the interviewer asks author Tamara Draut, without any irony, “Why is it so much more difficult for your generation to make it economically than it has been for earlier generations?” (Stop and think about that. Earlier generations? You mean like the one that lived through the Great Depression?) She proceeds to explain the hardships of living the simple life in Manhattan where she and her husband periodically shed some of their CDs at the end of the month to buy groceries. “We don’t live extravagantly. You won’t find any designer clothes in my closet,” she says, as if the absence of Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan constituted the last word on penny-pinching miserliness.

Then, of course, having defined the “crisis” Draut comes forward with the solutions, which, you guessed it, are government subsidies and payments. Chief among these is “earn and learn” which amounts to working 30 hours a week while the government pays for graduate courses in high-demand fields—or not. One imagines that the proletariat drawn to Draut’s analysis would probably lean heavily toward topics like women’s studies, conflict resolution and comparative gay lit. Listen for yourself. You will be astounded.

Duck and Cover

The ports controversy has entered its "terminal" phase: blame-shifting.

The Associated Press reports this afternoon that three important cabinet secretaries, along with the President, have denied prior knowledge of the proposal to allow DPWorld to manage a number of major U.S. ports. The AP puts it this way:

President Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and even Treasury Secretary John Snow, who oversees the government committee that approved the deal, all say they did not know about the purchase until after it was finalized. The work was done mostly by assistant secretaries.

For those who have spent any time at all in the federal bureaucracy, the above statement is a flight of fancy. A major initiative like this could not have been developed without the knowledge, consent and, most likely, direction of at least one cabinet secretary. What we see here is a game of musical chairs in which the last person left without a seat will find themselves out of the game. I can guarantee you, there are enough chairs to cover the posteriors of the principles mentioned above.

Several graphs down you can see the real struggle going on. There was an interagency working group of assistant secretaries charged with ironing out the details on the deal. One of them, at the Department of Homeland Security, has immunity protection in the game of bureaucratic survivor, probably in the form of an email chain:

Stewart Baker, a senior Homeland Security official, said he was the sole representative on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States who objected to the ports deal. Baker said he later changed his vote after DP World agreed to the security conditions. Other officials confirmed Baker's account.

The “changed vote” part of the story mentions means that while some culpability still attaches to Mr. Baker (he could have continued to object to the deal) he has snagged a seat because he at least sensed that this proposal might not pass the smell test and worked to make the package as inoffensive as possible. Baker gets a chair.

What the article does not delve into is who else served on the interagency group who might later be fingered as the tone-deaf political appointee who really “owns” the DPW issue. You can be sure that each an every person in this group has spent the last four days scouring through emails to develop a scenario which affixes blame to someone else while being completely exculpatory to them. The fight for the remaining chairs will be savage.

Mark Steyn Is Never Dull -- And Rarely Wrong

Check out this column from The Austrailian. Then try to sleep.

Spot-on post about the Summers-Hahvard scandal from the most unlikely of sources -- Alan Dershowitz. PC run amok in the rarified atmosphere of the academy. It's a whole different world "in there."

Signs that sanity still exists in this world: New Hampshire has decided to remove their welcome signs that say "You're going to love it here" and replace them with the much-beloved state motto "Live Free or Die." Here, here.

And I found this a very interesting essay on Leo Strauss, striking into new ground on just what the great thinker and his current devotees are up to. A worthwhile read.

Larry, We Hardly Knew Ye

The Times of London runs a post-mortem on the short-lived presidency of Lawrence Summers at Harvard Univeristy. Actually, it doesn't seem that short; more like a slow-motion firing squad.

Other than President Summers' intemperate comments about women in the sciences, I really didn't know much about him despite the fact that a large swath of his government career overlapped (in time, not distinction) with my own. As portrayed in the Times he seems a very unlikely choice for a university president, much less the leader of Harvard. In one very amusing story he seems to have dropped a chicken wing into the cuff of his trousers during a diplomatic reception and walked around the remainder of the evening with the snack appended to his leg. A barbarian at the gate, to be sure.

For reasons that I have never explored in depth, the topic of liberal academic intolerance is one of endless fascination to me. How can people and institutions so committed to a diversity of views be so closed at the same time? And how, HOW can they not understand just how constricted their views are? How can people who spend a good deal of their time denigrating the oppressive authoritarianism of, say, the Roman Catholic Church, not understand that by comparison with academia, the Church is a veritable free-for-all?

Tis a mystery, isn't it? The power of self-deception truly is boundless.

An informant on the Hill tells me that their office has just started to field Jack Abramoff-Malaysia-Ports calls. First call, handled by a young woman, was as follows:

He also told her she'd be a fifth class citizen if we turned over the ports and all he’d see of here was her lovely eyes, because the Taliban would make her cover up everything else. Among other things.

Not that, you know, anyone's going to get hysterical or anything.

More Port Stuff

A friend on Capitol Hill emails me:
Phones are lighting up all day over this Arab-US port purchase. The President fanned the flames and says he'll veto it..everyone's outraged..

My take: President turned up the volume to squeeze out any other media stories...like the one linking a Presidential meeting arranged by indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Heritage foundation, and the President of Malaysia...

Two clever by half?

I reply: yes! You are!

Dr. Potomac has said everything that I would have, and made the bet that I would have...I hope you took them to the cleaners, Doc. Were the words "Capitol Grill" involved?

The only thing to add is that there is a good symposium at NRO on the "Port Deal". My opinion is basically a composite of those of James Carafano, James Robbins and Michael Ledeen, That is: it's pretty stupid to get worried about loss of American control over shipping after fifty years of abdicating control over all aspects of our maritime infrastructure; this firm does not control the security of the port, the Coast Guard does, and they need more funding; the Administration is obviously making nice to Dubai for the things they have done over the last several years (see James Robbins' list); no matter how smart this idea was for international politics and diplomacy, it was a very silly move to make in domestic politics...or, as Michael Ledeed puts it, "This is the foreign-policy equivalent of the Harriet Meiers nomination to the Supreme Court, isn’t it?"

Ouch. More seriously, is it possible to make the necessary international political moves to further the Long War while still maintaining domestic support? I think it, ultimately, unlikely. Thus the Long War becomes characterized by covert and military options, which cannot do everything...

The People Knows Best

My Beloved, who works on Capitol Hill, recently talked to a voter who said the following:

“I’m so glad we got him in there. What’s his name, Libido? Nah. But you know who I mean. That judge.”

Well, yeah, sure.

The Administration Shoots; Dr. Potomac Scores!

I had a friendly wager with several co-workers today over the ports controversy. (For those who have been working on their fall-out shelters for the past 72 hours, the Administration has been roasting inside a firestorm of its own making by signing off on a deal to have a Middle East-based firm take over management of most of the major ports on the East and Gulf Coasts.) My co-workers took the position that this was one huge mistake; the Department of Homeland Security had put this package together without consulting the White House. It was just another “heckuva job” moment in the sad, short history of DHS.

I demurred from this theory; the story, I argued, was probably much worse. Not only had the White House been briefed it was going to aggressively support the idea of turning the ports over to Arab management. Why? To demonstrate in a tangible way that even in the midst of the global war on terror the U.S. can distinguish between friends and foes. Shortly after we made this wager, the President came out swinging in support of the deal.

Even if this policy was plausible in a theoretical sense, the politics are a disaster. A president with approval ratings in the high 30s, whose strong suit is national security, and whose party is clinging to a narrow majority with a general election strategy built on reminding the public that the opposition has the judgment of turnip on matters relating to keeping the country safe doesn’t walk a plank to put Abu Dhabi in charge of the arties of commerce.

About the only joy to be had in this story is the politically correct bind it has put the doyens of National Public Radio. On the one hand, any mistake by the Administration is a cause for rejoicing. On the other, one has to be careful about appearing to support nativism. It’s really a matter of having to choose between two first principles ("Bush is bad" and “we are not rubes”) and one could hear the tight, confused smiles through my car radio speakers.

The End of Fukuyamaism

Francis Fukuyama writes of his parting of the ways with neoconservatives in today's NYT magazine. I have to admit I find Mr. Fukuyama among the most interesting (and frustrating) third-way commentators on the scene today. A thoughtful observor, he is periodically tempted to The Grand Theory That Explains Everything. The trouble with grand theories is that they are forced into generalization and as they generalize are subject to death by a thousand op/eds. We’ve been down this road several times with Fukuyama, The End of History (all states evolving toward democracy) and The Great Disruption (in which the good professor decides that birth control is the key to understanding all of the current state of Western culture), to name just two over-arching theories that didn’t hold up to second and third readings.

Today Fukuyama lays out a compelling critique of the Bush Doctrine and says that he takes leave of the neoconservatives. (We’ll have to wait and see whether any of the other neocons notice that he’s gone missing.) Much of what Fukuyama has to say seems indisputable. The grand vision of democracy promotion that lies at the heart of the Bush Doctrine appears to have run aground on the particularities of Muslim culture. (Note of thanks to my good friend at A Mind that Suits who introduced me to this idea that conservatives are drawn not so much to grand visions as to attention to particular historical and cultural circumstances as the main touchstones for policy.) Democracy ain't beanbag and the people of the Middle East don't seem particularly keen on it or prepared to participate in it as a bunch of little Edmund Burkes. When the vote is permitted, the radical Islamists thrive (Iran, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, for examples.) We are spilling blood and treasure to install democracy in a culture that is, essentially, pre-democratic in nature.

Here's where Fukuyama's argument becomes circular in nature. He says the Bush Doctrine won't work while arguing at the same time that the unreconstructed "realist" school (prop up your strongman and extract as much oil as you can) is also unsustainable. In fact, he goes so far as to say that to the extent that we are dealing with democratically elected radicals we are at least dealing with governments that to a significant degree reflect the people they represent (careful readers will recognize this as one of my own reflections on the Hamas victory several weeks ago. Do you think Dr. Fukuyama is reading Dr. Potomac?) This realignment between governments and the governed, Fukuyama says, is a healthy thing in the same way that letting poison seep from one’s veins is healthy. I, then, ask this question: if the Bush Doctrine is failing by creating results like a Hamas-led PA, and if this type of Arab government is the lesser of two evils, then how, again, is Bush Doctrine failing?

The rest of the Fukuyama analysis is pure blather about the need for greater multi-laterialism, and, get ready for this, multi-multilateralism. We need, he says, a variety of sub-global organizations (more NATOs, not more UNs) that can provide political cover for American intervention and avoid the political inconveniences created by unilateral action.

Well, okay, but I am still left with the view that this prong of the Fukuyama Doctrine is whistling past the graveyard. The problem we are facing vis-à-vis the Muslim world is not a lack of political institutions to serve as a front for united action but the evaporation, in a very short period of time, of the political and civilizational will to confront radical Islam at all. Rioting in Paris in 2005 and the more recent unrest over cartoons of the Prophet have met with a shockingly flaccid response, particularly by the American media who have been, shall we say, appeasement-minded in the instance. In short, our major outlets have said, “We won’t reprint the cartoons because we don’t want to gratuitously inflame passions.” I can’t resist making the point that this logic was absolutely nowhere to be found when it came to releasing the latest round of Abu Ghraib torture photos last week. These pictures were not new revelations and were inflammatory of Arab passions in the extreme. The logical conclusion from these nearly contemporaneous episodes is that our own media is more than happy to inflame Arab passions so long as the graphics in question portray the U.S. in the worst possible light. This is no way for a society to wage a protracted twilight struggle against terrorism.

I have the uncomfortable sensation these days of living not through an end-game but through the opening moves of a new world war, and one that we are terribly unprepared to wage at the level of morale, where wars are won and lost. On our side we have technology, prosperity, reason and tolerance. But our will to fight for birthrights has been undermined by decades of cultural relativism and reflexive victimology. Our adversaries have the irreplaceable advantage of being untroubled by their own inhumanity and intolerance. They make no apologies and will meet each of ours with greater and greater demands. In this conflict, what the radical Islamists lack in material assets they more than make up for in their dark passions. The storm clouds gather and we ignore the signs at our own peril.

Setting the Record Straight

My chops are pretty much fully busted over my Battlestar Galactica post with both the Style Editor and the Ombudsman having taken their shots in public and in private. I would like it noted for the blog record, however, that both of my colleagues have indicated a strong interest in watching BG after reading the piece. The Style Editor has even added it to her Netflix queue. Geeks of a feather, in my book.

Whoo-wheee! None of us can keep up with Dr. Potomac, now that he has a) a new very heavy laptop and b) an ultrafast wireless network.

Myself, I saw the Style Editor over the weekend. "Did you see Dr. Potomac's Battlestar Galactica post," she asks? "Well," I says, "well, I did not read beyond a couple of sentences, and am foregoing that pleasure for later. You?" She clears her throat, and says the following, "Well, I heard it in person, so I do not not need to read it. And I was backing slowly towards the door during his monologue, at that."

Presidential Handicapping

For the life of me, I can't understand why George Allen would be at the top of the list unless the sample is biased toward Virginia Republicans for some reason. His appeal is inexplicable to me -- too much of the jock (or at least the son of a jock) politician in him for me. Besides, he's completely unreliable on social issues. Every politician is a balance of ambition and principle. Allen's meter tips too far toward ambition for me.

As I have admitted in the past I have a soft spot for McCain based on personal experience with the guy. His two biggest assets are the fact that he is rock-solid on national security (the Ombudsman has opined on occasion that he's too much of a hawk which is really saying something in my book), a squish on stem cell research (bad) and God knows what he would do in terms of staffing the federal agencies. I fear significant leftward drift. On the other hand, we Republicans are royalists to the core and I don't think the party can bring itself to reject someone who ran second last time and has been, more or less, a good team player for President Bush, especially on Iraq and terrorism. Besides, he is easily the most electable of the bunch, especially if he takes a conservative carpet-chewer as his number 2.

Which brings me to Sam Brownback. His campaign for president is going to be an implosion of the first order but he has the chops to be a good VP candidate and hold down the right wing in a general election contest. And he's so ambitious he'd be begging for the nomination.

The rest of the guys on this list have about as much chance of being President of the United States as your average contributor to Dr. Curmudgeon and Company. Giuliani, too compromised on social issues; never gets out of Iowa. Bill First? You jest. Did you see his speech at the 2004 convention? That's how he actually talks -- after speech coaching.

Of course, I don't regard the list as being complete. Governors have a way of coming out of nowhere and the actual entrants may look a lot different than this sampling.

Human Events published the CPAC poll on who will be the next Republican nominee. Here are the totals:

George Allen: 22%
John McCain: 20%
Rudy Giuliani: 12%
Condoleezza Rice: 10%
Bill Frist: 6%
Tom Tancredo: 5%
Mitt Romney: 5%
Newt Gingrich: 5%
Rick Santorum: 3%
George Pataki: 3%
Undecided: 4%

Count me a little uninspired. McCain, Guiliani, Frist, Gingrich, and Pataki are underwhelming. I need to know more about Allen, but first impressions are a bit low. Rice won't run. I like Romney only because I am from New England -- no other reason, pure parochialism.

Could I ask Dr. Potomac and the Style Editor to use their insider DC knowledge and tell those of us in the Red States why (1.) Sam Brownback isn't on this list, and (2.) why he is chuckled about privately?

And could they give us any other names to look at? This list has me yawning.

Rite of Spring

Many people may find it dumb, some beyond understanding, others simply quaint. But for many lifelong New Englanders (even those, like yours truly, in exile), the Red Sox truck leaving Fenway Park for Florida spring training is a momentous, seasonal event. It warms the heart, on this windy, cold Indiana day, to know that spring training is close upon us, that the slow warmth of spring will soon be creeping north, that nights listening to a ball game on the car radio are just around the corner. So sayeth Red Sox PR man Charles Steinberg:

In any baseball city, the truck's departure for Spring Training connects with a lot of fans. In Boston and in New England, that is magnified so many times over. Instead of just making it our little private fireplace of warmth, you want to connect with the fans, resonate with the fans, share it with the fans, give them a chance to celebrate spring as well.

When you see the images of snow at one end and sunshine at the other ... this trip is a metaphor. Winter is going to end. Spring is going to come. And baseball is the robin. Baseball heralds spring. You want to celebrate that.

Here, here, and amen. Opening Day is the next milestone (okay, perhaps St. Patrick's Day comes in a close second). I can recall in high school how many had Sony Walkmans in class, listening to every pitch, and how the end-of-the-day announcements over the intercom included the latest score from Fenway. The three R's are important, sure, but let's not lose sight of the really important things.

Give me baseball and soon.

First Things and Battlestar Galactica

At the risk of veering off into the fever swamps of sci-fi fandom, I’d like to make a plug for Battlestar Galactica. As nearly as I can tell, and against all reason, this show is probably the most serious offering on television for exploring the boundaries and relationship between faith and public life.

Really, you say, how interesting. Tell me more.

Well, if you insist.

For those unacquainted with the background of the show, the Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi channel, is a grimy, minimalist update of the velveeta-drenched 1970s, post-Star Wars television program starring Loren Green and a host of eminently forgettable actors. It appears to have been filmed mostly in British Columbia which probably accounts for the fact that the entire cast looks grungy even when in dress military uniforms. About the only thing the new series has in common with the old is its basic premise: 12 colonies of human beings numbering in the billions of people are effectively wiped out by humanoid machines called Cylons armed with nuclear weapons. The remnant survivors form up around the last surviving military ship, the Galactica, and begin their trek to…somewhere. Here’s where the religion angle comes in.

It is pretty clear that before the Cylons begin nuking the humans, the colonists were fat, complacent, and drained of spiritual energy. The gods (names identical to the gods of ancient Greece) are worshipped in a pro forma manner, treated as a kind of corporate mythology to prop up the state and unify the civilization. The gods themselves are without value because in the minds of most they don’t exist. Among the technocrats of the 12 colonies, religion is boob-bait for bubbas. (Speaking of that, the most religious colony is Gemenon which appears to have been inhabited entirely by black Baptists. Wade Henderson, call the Racial Stereotypes Division.)

Here the show’s writers take note of the atheists-in-foxhole conundrum. With colonial civilization in ruins and Cylons dropping out of hyperspace every 33 minutes to finish off what’s left of the human race, the hard-pressed colonists are facing a crisis of hope. Through despair, religion makes a come-back. The colonial scriptures tell the story of a 13th colony called Earth. Galactica’s commander, Adama (first man, get it?), declares that he knows the location of Earth which has been a closely guarded government secret. He will lead the people to salvation. In fact, Adama has lied, playing the old double game of using religion to rally the people while believing not a word he says about the existence of Earth.

Adama’s civilian counterpart, President Roslyn, under a death sentence from cancer, finds true faith. She believes in Earth’s existence, that the scriptures are authentic and the information they contain essential to human survival. Her religious vision animates her constitutional role as leader and protector of the people. As she agitates for finding the way to find Earth, Adama leads a coup against her government. Undeterred, Roslyn peels off a third of the civilian fleet to search for Kobol, the ancient home planet of human civilization. On Kobol, she finds what she’s looking for, a kind of planetarium that shows the general direction of the Earth. For the first time since the attack there is hope and direction for the survivors. Even Adama is converted to her viewpoint. Technology has failed, military strength has been found wanting. The myth, it turns out, is both true and full of hope.

The human struggle to balance and integrate religion and public life is juxtaposed against the single-minded religious fervency of the Cylons themselves. In the old series, the Cylons were pure machine. In the new show, they appear identical to humans – only sexier. Unlike the lukewarm polytheistic colonists, however, the Cylons are zealous monotheists serving the One True God. They evangelize the top human scientist and tell him to repent of his sins. The head Cylon, the eye-popping Number 6, says repeatedly that God has a destiny for each person. She also makes it clear that you don’t want to be a sinner in the hands of angry Cylon. Here is the worst of religion as we know it: belief at the point of a sword, an inquisition, holy coercion, a jihad. In their single-minded war against the humans, they resemble nothing so much as al-Qaeda out to impose a universal caliphate.

It is hard to watch these murderous Cylons without feeling a twinge of sympathy. Their war appears to be a nuclear powered adolescent rebellion on steroids. These are the children of men returned with a vengeance. The implication is that these beings are made not begotten, filled with gifts but devoid of love. One of the sub-themes of the show is the Cylon effort to duplicate human reproductive processes. I doubt we will find this to be a simple issue of the relative efficiencies of cell division versus manufacturing. The Cylons want to be fully human, and, perhaps, to supplant the colonists as the sole heirs of divine love. In their desperate effort to replicate every detail of human life they are pathetic and menacing at the same time.

There is much to be examined in this series, and it is interesting the producers devoted so much of the first and second seasons to the complexities of religion in a democratic society and to driving home the point that for faith to be real it has to be freely chosen as well. It is ironic that in a time when the role of religious faith in public life has taken center stage both at home and abroad, it has fallen to a science fiction program to ask questions unfit for prime time. For the sake of economics, Hollywood might want to rethink that. It turns out sleek special effects and ersatz high-technology are unnecessary when a program inhabits a rich moral universe.

Be sure to check out the latest profile of White House speechwriter-cum-senior-advisor, Mike Gerson. As I keep telling every committed Christian I know, the next President is going to be a huge disappointment -- even if he or she is a Republican. Bush not only shares the values of evangelicals, he expresses those values in a language that appeals to the God-minded. That is largely the work of Mr. Gerson who has truly set a new standard for presidential speechwriting.

My favorite dead-wrong but funny quiz answer of the day:

Fill in the Blank: With the Currency Act of 1900, the Republican Party put America's currency firmly on the __________________.

I've had two students answer "map."

With all this posting, I feel I should say something...

Silence is golden?

No? Then you’ve have to settle for a legal tale.

One of the Style Editor’s comrades of yore is now an assistant DA, protecting the fair and fortunate citizens of her area with her razzle–dazzle legal skills and not inconsiderable common sense. Occasionally, as a sort of public service and exubernatcelebration of th efact that she is no longer in private practice, she shares the occasional tale, such as the following:

The Beauty of Having Nothing Left

This is another one of my "why I love my job" moments. I had a pro se motion hearing yesterday with a guy named Louis. Louis was representing himself because he was dissatisfied with the mediocre representation he had been receiving these past five years. While I still don't have a clue as to what specifically Louis was asking the Court to do for him, like most prisoners I deal with, at the end of the day he was generally just hoping that we were going to change our mind about things and send him home.

About 15 minutes into the hearing (and about an hour after I first started trying to figure out what it was he wanted and 30 minutes after I first realized he was perhaps the dumbest man I have ever met), Louis finally began to realize that we weren't changing our minds and that he was in fact going to have to finish serving the balance of his prison term. It was at that moment that he realized that, since he was already maxing out, he had nothing left to lose. He looked up at the Judge and with a great deal of sincerity and passion stated, "I would like the record to reflect that the Commonwealth can KISS MY ASS."

I must admit it was a beautiful moment. I am also pleased to report that Louis still has approximately 12 months left to relive that glory out at the local pen.

Let me take a moment to do Bunnie Diehl's work for her. (Thank me, Bunnie.)

So here is Christianity Today on the National Prayer Breakfast. Key 'graph:

The prayer breakfast, begun during the Eisenhower administration, historically draws 3,600 attendees from 155 nations, including heads of state. A low-profile group commonly known as Fellowship Foundation sponsors the annual event. The group's well-connected members around the world work behind the scenes to provide members of Congress and foreign dignitaries with spiritual encouragement and fellowship. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota, who co-chaired the breakfast with Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Arkansas, is the event's first Jewish chair.

Then CT goes and kind of confuses the matter. They write that King Abdullah of Jordan, according to his advisor Joseph Lumbard, "wants to engage in a deeper dialogue with Catholics and members of other Christian traditions."

"We all have an interest in a secure and just peace in the Holy Land," Lumbard said. He added that the king has also been trying to "help evangelicals come to a more thorough understanding of the traditional teachings of Islam" and address misunderstandings resulting from the claims of extremists. Following the luncheon he met with a select group of evangelical leaders.

Color me crazy, but doesn't that kind of retroactively go and make the whole Prayer Breakfast kind of, you know, Evangelical and Protestant? When, at long last, this year any pretense to being a Christian gathering was finally dropped and it is finally and matter-of-factly a gathering of Interfaith American Civil Religion? When even "the Fellowship" has for years resisted being called Christian? (Remember, it's "Jesus plus Nothing"?)

Just asking.

[Ed.–BTW, what do you think of the Jeff Sharlet piece on Sam Brownback in Rolling Stone? Well, not that much. It's cringe-inducing, sure, because it involves Sam Brownback; but my respect for Sharlet continues to wane. He used to be God-haunted, but he now seems to find it much easier to be a sort of Side Show Barker of Freaks, Geeks and Deaks of American Religious Life for an eye-rolling Upper East Side audience. This is not a hard job.]

In RE The Danes

Fascinating thing to see the Danes struggle with the problem of their own determined pluralism. It turns out that not everyone is as committed to the principle of live-and-let-live as some of our European allies thought they would be. A substantial segment of the Muslim community seems completely unreconciled to notions like a free press, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, etc. At the same time, they seem to have fully internalized the rights-demanding victim culture, which is handy if you are trying to generate a smoke-screen to cover tyrannical impulses.

It is time for Europe to wake up and, to paraphrase Justice Robert Jackson, acknowledge that tolerance and pluralism cannot become suicide notes. Pluralism and tolerance have to be defended -- even to the extent of tapping phones and engaging in the occasional pre-emptive strike -- if these ideas are not going to be used as a hammer to destroy the societies that generate them. Keeping a republic, or even a constitutional monarchy, puts demands on all of us. Even the Danes.

Darn decent article by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe, "We are all Danes now." Alternately stunning and pleasing to see the Continentals of Old Europe finally showing some backbone, is it not?

Count me as thinking this is fascinating -- Mussolini's last surviving child has died, his son Romano at age 79. He was an accomplished jazz pianist who played with all the greats of the 50s and 60s (talk about anti-fascist) AND was married to Sophia Loren's sister. Whoah!

Having some chicken wings for your Super Bowl party? How about this guy? He won a wing eating contest in Philly...173 chicken wings...

Thoughts on Boehner

Dr. Potomac has had only very limited exposure to now-Majority Leader John Boehner but he thinks that exposure is instructive nonetheless. A number of years ago, Dr. Potomac attended a political fundraising event where Boehner was present. There he was slouched in a comfortable chair, cigarette in one hand and a darkish whiskey in the other regailing what Dr. Potomac assumes was a lobbyist with what he further assumes was a joke Boehner wouldn't want attributed to him in print. Boehner was all deep-set eyes, darkly tanned skin and cynicism. This is the man to whom the House Republicans have entrusted their future. Because cynical men have their place when narrow majorities are at stake, Dr. Potomac withholds judgment as to whether Boehner as leader is a good or bad idea.

Oh, and one other thing. A close professional associate of Dr. Potomac who is frequently called on for advice relating to personnel has a rather iron-clad rule: never hire a Boehner staffer. Something to ponder, isn't it?

Oh I don't know about that. I think the test is HIGHLY accurate.

I'm a Mercedes SLK!

You appreciate the finer things in life. You have a split personality - wild or conservative, depending on your mood. Wherever you go, you like to travel first class. Luxury, style, and fun - who could ask for more?

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

OK, much to his surprise the computer indicates, somewhat tentatively, that Dr. Potomac is a sporty Honda S200. Since anyone who has made Dr. Potomac's acquaintance would probably be quite surprised to see him behind the wheel of such a vehicle, it makes him wonder whether this test isn't somewhat less accurate than one of those personality tests they give at church retreats and government employee training conferences.

I thought I would come out an Edsel or Ford Falcon, but turns out I am a practical Mazda Rx-3.

As per my curmudgeonly reputation, I move to eliminate the State of the Union Address and return to the "Annual Address to Congress," which was used from Jefferson to Wilson. The only thing missing Tuesday was Joan Rivers standing on the red carpet critiquing congressional dress -- one network actually asked its analysts, "President Bush is wearing a blue tie. What do you think is the significance of this?" How did he dress? How was his "delivery?" Who gives a flying fish? Just write up a message, send it to Congress, and have the clerks read it. If it was good enough for Franklin Pierce, it's good enough for George Bush (they are distant relatives, you know).

Drunk riding is legal in South Dakota. Giddyup!

Good point over at the "other" curmudgeon site, Joys of Curmudgeonry. "If the cartoon-caricatures of the prophet Muhammad were meant to propagate a dim view of the character of Islam, they do not do so as nearly as well as do the reactions to them in the Muslim world."

I'm a Dodge Viper!

You're all about raw power. You're tough, you're loud, and you don't take crap from anyone. Leave finesse to the other cars, the ones eating your dust.

Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Here that, Doc? Back off. I don't take nothing from nobody, understand? Yeah.

Now I will go move my Neon before it gets a ticket...

Certain technological improvements in Dr. Potomac's home now make it possible to watch television and surf the web at the same time. Difficult to say whether this will be thought of as progress for civilization as a whole.

Good grief! Liveblogging the State of the Union! Dr. Potomac appears to have turned into an insatiable blogger. (With plenty of inside jokes, too; most people in the United States are happily ignorant of just who Rosa de Lauro is.)

Another Warning Shot in Virginia

Democrats captured another Assembly seat in a special election yesterday. This time the victory came in Loudon County, one of the high-growth ex-urbs of a type that fueled President Bush's victory in 2004. Admittedly, not all ex-urbs are equal. Loudon's close proximity to DC makes it a haven for current and former bureaucrats and those who make their living off the federal contracting teat. Leesburg, the county seat, is trending artsy these days, a kind of St. Michael's, Maryland without the water. During a recent visit to Leesburg, Dr. Potomac passed a late-night palm-reading/blue-grass music joint right in the middle of town. He thinks this an ill omen in terms of Loudon's cultural and political future.

The scale of Democrat Mark Herring's victory is impressive as he garnered almost 70 percent of the vote over Mick Staton, a Republican county supervisor. The main issues in the race were the pace of development and traffic congestion -- not too suprising given the growing pains of the outer suburbs. The underlying problem for the Republican was undoubtedly that virtually no one was paying attention to a Statehouse by-election at the end of January. That's all well and good, but why not? Dr. Potomac thinks something deeper is at work here. After two very intense, "national security" elections and the grinding war in Iraq, he fears the base may be in a state of semi-exhaustion. And, while he appreciates Karl Rove's recent framing of the 2006 mid-term elections in national security terms, he wonders how much juice is actually in that issue right now. The trends don't look good this morning.

SOTU V

Sabotage! Just lost 20 minutes of brilliant commentary. Dr. Potomac was momentarily distracted by Rosa De Lauro's scarf. She appears to have been kicked out of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft.

Alito gets a standing O welcoming him to the Supreme Court. Very nice. Salt in the wounds, one would think. Buh-bye, Sandra Day. The doors to the chamber are heavy -- don't let one hit you on the way out.

The Levin brothers are sitting together, one from the House and the other from the Senate. They appear to be Disney escapees from the set of Snow White. Grumpy and Dopy or perhaps Grumpy and Sneezy. Hard to tell them apart.

Can someone tell me why Lloyd Ogylvie, former chaplain of the Senate, is in attendance this evening?

SOTU IV

We appear to be edging into the domestic security portion of the speech now. He asks for reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Silent Dems, minority Dems. W claims constitutional authoritiy on wiretaps. "If there are people on our country talking to Al Qaeda we want to know about it because we won't sit back and wait to be hit again." It is an unanswerable argument. Prepare for dithering in the Democratic response.
(By the way, how galling it must be for the likes of Maria Cantwell to stand and applaud a person and policies for which she has no sympathy. Dr. Potomac wonders whether they all go get drunk after its over.)

SOTU III

Wow. W takes on radical Islam as the primary threat to freedom of the world. "We love our freedom, and will fight to keep it." Most of the Democrats refuse to join in the applause on the main "victory in Iraq" points. Shameful. There it is: the Democratic party's real problem. A significant portion of it has no will to defend the country's core principles and values. What is the sound of one Lieberman clapping?

The President looks grim. "We must stand behind our military in this vital mission". Finally the Ds clap ("it isn't the troops we oppose; just the policies that put them there." Do they honestly believe the public is going to make such a distinction or vote for people who do?)

Prolonged applause for "no nukes for Iran." Some one should move a resolution giving our president the authority he needs to prevent that. How about you, Senator Schumer?

SOTU II

A nice grace note: the tribute to Coretta Scott King to kick off the address.

Looks as though the female Senators and Representatives have cleaned out Washington department stores of their red gowns.

I see in the balcony Dr. Gary Slutkin of Ceasefire Chicago. This is a very interesting violence reduction program that takes a public health/epidemeological approach to gang activity. A favorite of the First Lady.

The State of the Union I

What a pleasure. There he is, Samuel Alito, newly minted Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Quite a victory to deliver the President just before addressing the nation. Could there be just a little more life in this presidency (and in the Republican majority in Congress) than the media would have us believe?

Fun with BHL

The gentlemen at Powerline are greatly exercised about M. Bertrand Henri Levy. Yikes, they're cross.

Not me! I have been reading his reviews and, as FDR was wont to say, "what a gas"! [Ed-You mean M. Levy? Him, too!] Laughter is the best medicine when the diagnosis is "French Intellectual".

Let us first lovingly and admiringly consider M. Alex Beam (sorry, it's contagious) of the Boston Globe. He begins by explaining just who the hell M. Levy is:

Sophisticated people everywhere -- Tina Brown! Adam Gopnik! -- are taking French celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy's new book, ''American Vertigo," very, very seriously. BHL, as he is known chez lui, figuratively retraced the 1831 American journey of his countryman Alexis de Tocqueville, spinning out his impressions first in a series of Atlantic magazine articles and now in a book.

Color me skeptical. I can't take Levy seriously at all. I stuck with his first Atlantic article until I tripped across the phrase ''Detroit, sublime Detroit." I burst out laughing.

Me too! I think I might have held on until M. Levy sought to understand the Native American question by talking to Russell Means, or someone. Then I moved on to see who Benjamin Schwartz was snarling at this month.

Beam does say that BHL gives a celebrity appearance worth the price of admission:

I heard Levy talk last spring at the New York Public Library, and it was magnifique. Catch him if you can. Levy's English is quite good, but even he couldn't decipher a meandering inquiry from his acolyte, loony-left actor Richard Dreyfuss, who seemed to want to talk about the First Amendment. ''What did he say? What did he say?" Levy kept asking his handlers, but alas no English-to-English translator was present.

So that's where Richard Dreyfuss has been since What About Bob? I was wondering...

But for a real, hit'em in the groin, savage takedown, you have to look for a Midwesterner; say, a Professional Midwesterner, like...Garrison Keilor! Who do the Liberal Fogey had it in him?

It's a review so good that I just want to paste the whole thing. Here are some highlights:

It is the classic Freaks, Fatties, Fanatics & Faux Culture Excursion beloved of European journalists for the past 50 years, with stops at Las Vegas to visit a lap-dancing club and a brothel; Beverly Hills; Dealey Plaza in Dallas; Bourbon Street in New Orleans; Graceland; a gun show in Fort Worth; a "partner-swapping club" in San Francisco with a drag queen with mammoth silicone breasts; the Iowa State Fair ("a festival of American kitsch"); Sun City ("gilded apartheid for the old");a stock car race; the Mall of America; Mount Rushmore; a couple of evangelical megachurches; the Mormons of Salt Lake; some Amish; the 2004 national political conventions; Alcatraz - you get the idea. (For some reason he missed the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the adult video awards, the grave site of Warren G. Harding and the World's Largest Ball of Twine.) You meet Sharon Stone and John Kerry and a woman who once weighed 488 pounds and an obese couple carrying rifles, but there's nobody here whom you recognize...

He likes Savannah and gets delirious about Seattle, especially the Space Needle, which represents for him "everything that America has always made me dream of: poetry and modernity, precariousness and technical challenge, lightness of form meshed with a Babel syndrome, city lights, the haunting quality of darkness, tall trees of steel." O.K., fine. The Eiffel Tower is quite the deal, too...

Bombast comes naturally to him...

As always with French writers, Lévy is short on the facts, long on conclusions...

And finally...

America is changing, he concludes, but America will endure. "I still don't think there's reason to despair of this country. No matter how many derangements, dysfunctions, driftings there may be . . . no matter how fragmented the political and social space may be; despite this nihilist hypertrophy of petty antiquarian memory; despite this hyperobesity - increasingly less metaphorical - of the great social bodies that form the invisible edifice of the country; despite the utter misery of the ghettos . . . I can't manage to convince myself of the collapse, heralded in Europe, of the American model."

Thanks, pal. I don't imagine France collapsing anytime soon either. Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was that all about? Were fat people involved?

My lesson is: despite everything that divides me and Garrison, we are united when some French Egoist writes a book.

Let's Play, "Who Wrote This?" !!!

The continual mistake of the Bush administration is to think, based on not much thinking to begin with, that people are people -- pretty much the same the world over. This is why the president extols democracy. (Lenin, more of a cynic, purportedly observed: ``Democracy counts heads without regard to what's in them.'') It must be what everyone wants because it is what everyone here wants. To denigrate this kind of talk suggests racism -- You mean we are not all the same? -- or a musty neocolonialism. But the hard truth is that culture and religion matter, and we should not expect moderation (as we did garlands and ecstatic maidens when U.S. troops entered Baghdad) just because that's how we would react. Toto knows the truth. The Middle East is not Kansas.

Who do you think? George Will? Nope. Brent Scowcroft? Nope. Pat Buchanan? Uh-uh.

The correct answer is: Richard Cohen!

Dr. Potomac long ago observed to me that he had stopped reading Richard Cohen because he was tired of reading whatever had popped into Richard Cohen's head before deadline. Case in point. It doesn't even fit into the opera omnia of Professor Richard Cohen. Skepticism of democracy? A belief that some cultures are better than others? Wuh! Huh! Do I have to even bother to look at old columns to see that this has nothing whatsoever to do with any of his political though in general?

Didn't think so.

A Shake-Up in The Arab Dream House

Unlike some in the commentariat, Dr. Potomac is not seriously disturbed by the fact that the radical Hamas faction has captured control of the Palestinian Authority. On university campuses across America, this is what would be called a "teachable moment."

The dominant feature of Arab politics is that it is buried in so many layers of lies and self-deception that it is paralyzed. The typical Arab government is a strong-man atop a restive populace who plays a double game of eliciting aid from the West while keeping its domestic population satisfied anti-Israeli (and anti-Semetic) rhetoric. (As the late Herman Talmadge said of politics, it is an art of taking votes from the poor and money from the rich while promising to protect them from one another. The Arab strongman simply plays this game at a higher and more dangerous level.)

In this sense, the Hamas victory is clarifying because it begins to wash away layers of political illusion. Namely, it has had the effect of installing a leadership that at least reflects the attitudes and misconceptions of the population it governs. To the extent that its rhetoric is anti-Israeli, it will have the virtue of being sincerly so and can therefore be dealt with in a serious fashion. No more will we have to degrade ourselves or the Palestinians by pretending that we believed their leadership while that leadership pretended to make peace with Israel. If the Hamas government continues in its aggressive ways, we pull the aid plug and no one (possibly not even the French) will say we have gone too far. The collapse of what remains of the economy in the West Bank and Gaza strip will teach its own lessons about elected extremism.

The second layer of this cleansing is merely potential. Elections change things, including the party that wins. In the post-election "man on the street" interviews one heard rather little concerning the destruction of Israel as the top priority of the average voter. One did hear a great deal about corruption, lack of basic services and problems with the local economy. Assuming Hamas must face a second clean election (a dicey assumption, Dr. Potomac admits) there will have to be a rather dramatic overhaul of the Hamas platform if the group intends to maintain its majority. One reason that democratic states don't start wars is that their politicians are too busy attending to the concerns of voters. War is bad for political business and is therefore avoided unless absolutely necessary.

This is all speculative, of course, and a whole variety of nightmare scenarios remain all too plausible. On the other hand, the world had just spent forty years on a road to nowhere with Arafat and Company. The Hamas victory at least gives us the chance to begin a frank and open conversation with a part of the world that has for too long been a deception, wrapped in a lie, inside a falsehood. It seems rather hopeful compared to diplomatic nonsense that preceded it.

Reflections on the Beaver State

This week's court ruling on the Oregon assisted suicide legislation provides so many opportunities for comment it is difficult to know where to start. The collapse of medical ehtics and/or Western civilization? The painful irony that is Anthony Kennedy, John Paul Stevens, and Ruth Ginsburg upholding the sacred principles of federalism? The laugh-out-loud dissent in which Antonin Scalia points out that Congress probably did not envision suicide as a legtimate form of "health care" when it passed statutes governing the prescription of powerful sedatives? A target rich environment, to be sure.

It would be petty to dwell on these ironies. Too easy, sitting Ducks, as it were. Dr. Potomac would rather take his (and your) precious time fully illuminating how the Oregon law that overturns several thousand years of human wisdom concerning the practice of medicine fits with the avalanche of illogic, denial and wishful thinking that from time to time seizes the state. Follow the story -- if you dare.

Chapter 1: The Tri-Met Honor System

In the mid-1980s, the denizens of the local bus system decreed an end to fare collections. In a fit of civic-minded lunacy, Tri-Met, which served hundreds of thousands of riders across the Portland-metro area, decided that the costs associated with collecting fares exceeded the revenue they generated. How this calculation was achieved Dr. Potomac cannot recall but he thinks the math would have been suspect even to the lower third of his high school algebra class. At any rate, it was decided that fares would now be collected on a sort of a don't-ask-don't-tell policy for public transportation. Riders who didn't drop their coins in the farebox were "assumed" to have purchased a pass elsewhere but didn't have to present one. Local and national news outlets hailed the program as the "next step" in mass transit, one that focused completely on the benefits of public transportation without sullying the concept with profit and loss statements.

Painful, isn't it? Even you, dear reader, can imagine the outcome of the scheme. Ridership skyrocketed, revenues plunged and red-ink, in an already heavily subsidized system, poured out of the Tri-Met offices into the streets. Fares had effectively been repealed but human nature -- you know, that part you heard about in your intro Econ courses called "the free-rider" phenomenon -- remained fully operational. Tri-Met was sinking fast.

Normal human beings would have bowed to defeat and reinstated the fares. But Oregonians are not normal, they are liberals. When confronted with indisputable evidence that the world is not as they wish it to be their response is completely predictable: double the bet. Also like liberals, they fell back on the coercive power of the state to attain their goal of a remade human nature. In this case, the Tri-Met board hired cops -- you know, public employees complete with generous salaries, benefits, and pensions? -- who had the sole purpose of staging raids on buses to catch fare-cheats. Dr. Potomac personally witnessed such a "bus-bust" complete with youths trying to scramble out of the bus windows to avoid capture. After a few months of the Tri-Met police state, a proof-of-fare policy was quitely reinstated.

Chapter 2: Free Bikes

Having learned nothing from the Tri-Met experience, in the early 1990s the City of Portland and a non-profit organization joined hands in a project that combined moral up-lift of the poor and the religious cult of environmentalism. In an effort to reduce traffic in the downtown core, the city and its non-profit partner decided to make bicycles available free of charge, and without locks, in special bike racks across. The bikes would be maintained by troubled youths from poor areas who, it was said, would learn a trade in bicycle repair. (You might well ask: how many bicylce repair-persons did the people of Portland need? Was the local community college undersubscribed in its bicycle repair classes? Were the pleasant folk of Portlandia being left with slipped chains and flat tires on the major thorough fares?) Users, it was thought, would return the bike to any one of the conveniently placed racks so that other car-averse Portlanders could have a turn.

Uh-huh. Well, it didn't turn out that way, of course. The bikes, hundreds of them, had a strange way of disappearing. It seems that the cash value of the bikes was somewhat greater than the non-cash benefits derived by riders or the youth who were building skills. Strike two for Oregon.

Chapter 3: Don't Kill Yourself -- Unless You're Really Sure

Twice now, by referenda, the People's Republic of Oregon has passed its physician assisted suicide legislation. Bad idea, of course, one Dr. Potomac thoroughly disapproves of, top of the slipperiest slope imaginable. What's really interesting, however, is the way Oregonians are responding to their own law.

One evening last fall as Dr. Potomac was driving home from a hard day SERVING THE PEOPLE, he chanced upon an NPR story concerning a curious (to them) phenomenon: a dramatic spike in suicides among elderly Oregonians. Turns out the old and sick were quite sensitive to the signal the public gave them in approving physician assisted suicide. The elderly, few of them terminally ill, were offing themselves in substantial numbers and without the aid of a doctor. The conventional means (carbon dioxide, gunshot and hanging) were quite adequate to the purpose and since the state had sanctioned it, why not?

True to form, Oregonians were agast. A sad, traumatic thing it is when one's mother or father or grandparent decides to shuffle off the mortal coil ahead of schedule. Something must be done, they cried, and so something was. (Can you guess? Wait for it.) Yes, the solution to the problem of elder suicide is a state-financed program...to prevent suicide among the elderly. "But, but," you might sputter, "it's unreasonable, illogical, comi-tragic." Yes, it's Oregon.

To My Faithful Readers -- Both of You

Dr. Potomac is shocked to have found his post concerning Intelligent Design both read, commented on and linked to. In appreciation to the two individuals who took the time to respond to my thoughts, Dr. Potomac answers back.

First, in response to TLKS2MYHRT, Dr. Potomac did not mean to leave the impression that ID and the debate over human origin is somehow unimportant. On the contrary, he believes both subjects to be well worth deep reflection and inquiry. His own ability to argue for the created nature of humanity has been immeasurably strengthened by studying the work of Philip Johnson, Nancy Pearcy and others. This is, quite simply, the most important foundational question any of us can address. Getting these issues wrong has been the source of incalculable harm, and getting them right is essential to a right relationship with God, ourselves and each other. To all those working in the field of ID, Dr. Potomac says, in the words of Winston Churchill, "KBO -- Keep Buggering On!"

To Eric Phillips, Dr. Potomac can't agree that ID is science because it doesn't seek to measure anything nor is it testable or verifiable through observation -- yet. Rather, ID is, at its best, a philosophical and logical objection to Darwinism and a very good one at that. Taking the world as a whole, it asks the question: Is it really possible that the complex beings (human and non-human) are simply the product of chance and time? If one finds a watch on the beach, is it possible that it assembled itself out the raw materials at hand? (Frankly, anyone who believes that will believe anything. According to a chemical engineer I know who has made something of a study of this, the math -- the number of mutations necessary to move from single-cell organisms to homo sapien -- just doesn't work in the available time-frame. Math, he tells me, is where Darwinism really falls apart.)

The other contribution ID makes is to point out the gaps in the Darwinist argument, marshaling the facts that are available to say, "Wait a minute. You have no evidence to support your assertion." Forcing science to clean up its act and behave like a good citizen is all well and good. The problem here is that science is pretty persistent about filling in its gaps, and if we base our case for creation solely on the gaps in the Darwinist system, little by little those gaps will be filled in with a mechanistic explanation. Once the gaps are explained away...what, exactly, will be left?

Dr. Potomac believes that one of the worst aspects of the way that we are engaging in this argument lies in strengthening the notion that the scientific method is the only way by which we can know things. This, he believes, is a betrayal of our full humanity. God created us with more than one faculty for perceiving and understanding the truth we find around us. Let's open as many new fronts in this fight as we can, including a robust engagement of the humanities that speak to the mind and soul.