Politics: August 2004 Archives

One of the more loathesome tendencies in American political life is the "gotcha" soundbite. The Democrats are jumping all over President Bush for supposedly saying "I don't think you can win" the war on terror. (See the transcript.)

The last time they reacted like this, it was when Bush said "We will double our Special Forces to conduct terrorist operations" in a major speech. Clearly, if you read the text and especially if you hear the interview, Bush was saying that we might not win the war on terror in four years, but he was interested in minimizing the conditions where terrorism can flourish.

I know, both sides play "gotcha." But it just turns people off of politics in general, and that's not good for anyone. Nobody seriously thinks that President Bush doesn't think we can win the war on terror -- he's said as much many times, but in his opinion, it will take many years. Nobody believes that he would send Special Forces troops on terror missions, either. It's insulting to our collective intelligence to play this kind of stupid game.

Oh, wait -- I'm sorry, my mistake: The guy who said we would conduct terrorist operations was Senator John F. Kerry in his own nomination speech.

The forces of diversity, tolerance, acceptance, peace, and love are on the prowl in Manhattan:

When marchers approached the Garden, a police detective was knocked off his scooter. He was then repeatedly kicked and punched in the head by at least one male demonstrator, the police said....

As delegate buses arrived at the Garden yesterday afternoon, protesters who had gathered for a demonstration screamed obscenities and gestured rudely at them. When the police spotted Pete Coors, a Republican candidate for Senate from Colorado, walking near the group, they swiftly steered him away....

Some delegates seemed perplexed, even hurt, not because they did not expect protesters to be here, but because they did not expect them to get personal. "They were using foul language, getting real ugly," said Kim Kirkwood, a delegate from Amarillo, Tex. Her husband, Jim, said he could not understand it. "I have friends who are Democrats in Texas, and we talk about things, agree to disagree."

The Left talks about respecting others' points of view just long enough to gain power, at which time they don their boots and stomp on the others' faces. When they get desperate after being out of power for years, they start screaming and attacking.

Does anyone else notice a (less violent) parallel between the secular Left and the Catholic Left? As their hold on seminaries, universities, chanceries, and other Catholic institutions wanes, they are getting ever more shrill and defensive. Here's a great example: look at the articles lamenting the orthodoxy of young priests. Even the New York Times has noticed that the typical ordinand these days ain't exactly Daniel Berrigan.

KERRY CHALLENGES BUSH TO WEEKLY DEBATES: In Anoka, MN, John Kerry challenged President Bush to weekly debates on the issues.

BUSH CAMP REAX: "There will be a time for debates after the convention, and during the next few weeks, John Kerry should take the time to finish the debates with himself. This election presents a clear choice to the American people between a President who is moving America forward and a Senator who has taken every side of almost every issue and has the most out of the mainstream record in the U.S. Senate," said BC'04 spokesman Steve Schmidt.

The is link to abcnews.com is from Drudge.

Gosh, I haven't seen you since this morning when I looked at the news!

Democrats are urging Bush to denounce independent campaign ads against Kerry. The latest is Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who went to the President's Ranch in Crawford, Texas to deliver a letter. No one there would accept it. Max, you don't need to deliver the letter at all. Just get enough people involved with Kerry's campaign to scream like banshees about this and Bush will just see it on the news.

By the way, why is Bush denouncing all the activity of the 527's not good enough for the Kerry campaign? First, because they are a bunch of whining babies. Second, because they are a bunch of whining babies. And third, the 527's helping the Kerry campaign have spent more than 54 million big ones trashing Bush, while the swiftees have spent a paltry half a million. "Mother" Teresa Heniz-(Kerry) probably owns half a million in shoes.

The media has thousands of litters of kittens over one volunteer for the Bush campaign who has helped the Swiftees. What about all the connections Kerry people have with 527's like the perfidious ACT and the perfidious-er MoveOn.org?

Don't cry, Kerry staffers! Mommie will be along with your blankie, your martini, and your mutual fund statement any time now. Just know that it's your candidate who decided to run on his Vietnam record. Bush didn't make this an issue.

UPDATE: Letter to Kerry - "You can't have it both ways."

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.

You said in 1992 “we do not need to divide America over who served and how.” Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.

John Kerry’s Two Vietnams - Mackubin Thomas Owens

As a correspondent pointed out to me in an e-mail, each episode of the HBO series Band of Brothers, begins with a voiceover in which the narrator says of the World War II soldiers portrayed in the program: "I was not a hero, but I was surrounded by heroes." In contrast, what John Kerry is saying in essence about his "band of brothers" is that "in Vietnam, I was a hero, but I was surrounded by war criminals."

Have a gander at this post by the Mighty Barrister.

In this cynical age, some lies are unremarkable. Take, for instance, Iran's nuclear program, whose sole purpose is to create weapons of mass destruction.

They don't actually come out and say that. Tehran's Islamist regime continues the fiction that their nuclear program is for "peaceful purposes," so they can generate electricity. With a straight face, journalists repeat the claim at face value.

Yet news reports almost never explain that Iran has more oil and natural gas than it knows what to do with, and burning them is a lot easier, less expensive, and less complicated than building nuclear reactors. Omitting those facts amounts to perpetuating Iran's lies.

Within the next two years, "the world" will have to either accept Iran's new dominance over the Mideast, or find some way to neutralize its nuclear capabilities. I put "the world" in quotation marks, because really it will be the United States, Israel, Great Britain and its former colonies, and several of the less enervated European states. The effeminate Germans will not be with us, and neither will the French, who have been the allies of militant Muslims at least since the battle of Lepanto.

We may pray that something will avert this crisis without bloodshed; indeed, it is our duty to pray for that outcome. But in my opinion, there are four possible outcomes:

1. Israel or the United States carries out a massive surprise attack on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities before they are able to assemble a functioning bomb.

2. Iran announces that it has a functioning nuclear warhead. It test-fires a ballistic missile into the Arabian Gulf to demonstrate the delivery range. A coalition of states enacts sanctions and gives Tehran an ultimatim to disarm or face the consequences. The regime, incapable of giving up its mass-murder devices without suffering a mortal blow to its credibility, prefers to fight. The coalition invades, and after a few weeks and possibly hundreds of thousands of dead, prevails.

3. Students, intellectuals, and mid-level clerics carry out a semi-bloodless coup, staging massive demonstrations and daring the secret police and security forces to respond. After firing some perfunctory bursts of machine-gun fire into the crowds, the government agrees to hold elections and carry out liberalizing political reforms.

4. Iran announces that it has a functioning nuclear warhead. It test-fires a ballistic missile into the Arabian Gulf to demonstrate the delivery range. The United Nations passes a weak resolution, representing a compromise between a bitterly divided General Assembly and Security Council, enacting trade sanctions against Iran and any state that assists its nuclear program. Iran makes some conciliatory statements, but makes no move to disarm. Over the years, the sanctions are slowly ignored, and Iran consolidates its newfound position as regional superpower, gradually spreading its Islamist influence into neighboring states.

The first scenario won't happen even if President Bush is re-elected. Thanks to the hysterical Democratic opposition, political reality militates against a pre-emptive strike against Iran, no matter how much they threaten their neighbors. Scenario #2 is even more fanciful -- what country will voluntarily place its soldiers within range of a nuclear bomb? Scenario #3 is plausible, but the list of regimes that have voluntarily given up power without violence is short (including, ironically, the Shah in 1979).

As you might guess by the length, I'd bet on scenario #4. It plays off of human inertia, folly, and wishful thinking; it requires no real action on behalf of U.N. members; and it privileges the sovereignty of a dangerous nation-state over true peace. It has the added bonus of being anti-Semitic, as Iran's first announced target is Israel.

In a broader sense, I would love to see the Church's leadership take a strong stand against Iran's murderous ambitions, but I am not holding my breath. Even though nuclear-armed Islamic fundamentalists are a clear danger to millions of lives, the bishops will not speak out against them in any meaningful way. They do not wish to make things harder for Christians living in Muslim lands, who already live precarious existences. And they, as a group, have an ingrained predilection for dialogue rather than the use of force, which is an admirable and humane trait -- and a dangerous temptation.

For we live in an age when violent men with absolutist, non-rational ideas use Western ideas to further their own ends. Things like state sovereignty and nuclear technology are good in themselves, but they can be abused. Yet the central conceit of the United Nations is that all member states are pretty much like Belgium. (Modern liberal Belgium, not the Belgium of the 19th century that ran a quasi-genocidal slave colony in the Congo.) Everything can be decided diplomatically, just like members of a gentleman's club, as long as we all keep talking and respecting each other's borders.

The Church, more or less, plays along with this, out of the altruistic belief that an international system can restrain the worst impulses of man. But secular man's idolatrous belief in state sovereignty allows a Sudan to murder poor Christians and vulnerable black Muslims -- because although the whole world knows it, they cower at the thought of stopping these crimes that cry out for vengence, because to violate Sudan's borders would be an unseemly display of contempt for man-made lines on a map.

Borders have their uses, as do states, and I don't mean to diminish their importance. But surely borders and states are not absolute? If a state uses its status to develop weapons that have no conceivable defensive purpose, with the intent to eradicate another country, shouldn't they forfeit their rights as a state? Certainly they should not be allowed to commit genocide?

Questions like these must be confronted in the very near future. That's what frustrates me about the low level of our national debates. The Michael Moore Democrats want to convince you that if we can just dump Bushitler, all these problems will go away, because the rest of the world hates the president so much.

But no matter what happens in November, Iran will get nukes, al Qaeda will keep plotting the mass murder of innocents, Islamists will continue preaching their message of hatred and resentment. Europeans will continue their death-march toward demographic oblivion, thanks to their socialist regimes.

The Church hierarchy ought to speak out on these topics, not in a prescriptive way (that is not their competence), but in a way that illuminates these new threats in the light of the Gospel. What are the obligations of states toward the citizens of other states, particularly when they are in mortal danger from their own governments? Does a state have an obligation to remove weapons of mass destruction from a hostile state?

If an individual state does not have the right to interfere with genocide, or to deter international mass murder on an epic scale, what about states operating collectively? Is the United Nations the only conceivable entity that can decide such questions? Should the United Nations be reformed to better safeguard peace and justice in the world?

These are all things that we need to consider, as Christians and as Americans (yes, in that order). I know, it's more fun to think about Iraq and what Senator Kerry did a third of a century ago in southeast Asia. But these questions won't wait -- Iran will go nuclear in the blink of an eye, and Sudan is sponsoring genocide at this very moment. Immediate action is necessary, but we also need to think of a long-term way of ordering our world, since the Second Coming isn't upon us yet, at least as I write this.

Link via Brit Hume's Grapevine on foxnews.com

Family Circle magazine says there's -- "no reason" to halt this year's recipe contest between the presidential candidates' wives -- even though Teresa Heinz Kerry now says her pumpkin spice cookies taste -- "nasty." In fact, Heinz Kerry has said the recipe isn't even hers, insisting somebody at the Kerry campaign gave that recipe out and -- "somebody [did] it on purpose to give a nasty recipe."

I thought she would have blamed it on a vast, right-wing conspiracy, not someone in her husband's campaign.

Laura Bush , meanwhile, is standing by her oatmeal chocolate chunk recipe. Since Family Circle had its first so-called bake-off in 1992, the winning recipe has always corresponded with who ends up living in the White House.

Before I get to the main subject, I wanted to call out the biased and silly lead in this article:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Friday defended the decision to issue terrorism warnings and tighten security in New York and Washington, saying "the threats we're dealing with are real" even though some of the intelligence on which the government acted was as much as four years old.

Is intelligence like milk? Does it come with an expiration date? Sure, updates are essential, but the terror warning was also based on much more recent information. If you're looking to establish that someone is a potential threat, or you want to know if someone is plotting a terror attack, you have to look at his actions over a long period of time, right? I've noticed that the author, Terence Hunt, likes to insert editorial comments into his copy. I usually expect better out of AP.

Here's the real subject of my comment, this paragraph near the bottom of the article:

[Bush said] he would consider supporting a constitutional amendment guaranteeing every American the right to vote in federal elections. "I can understand why African Americans in particular are worried about being able to vote since the vote had been denied for so long in the South in particular." He said Congress had approved $3 billion for states and local governments to make sure the voting process is fair.

This is astonishing. Forty years ago, Congress passed a major civil rights act to guarantee that, among other things, blacks could vote on an equal footing with whites. There are offices and departments honeycombing the Federal bureaucracy, all of them concerned with voting-rights compliance. High-priced lawyers and prosecutors are scanning the land, looking for these rights to be violated. Blacks can now vote without any legal impediments. Yet now we need a constitutional amendment to guarantee these things?

Up until about 10 minutes ago, I didn't even know this was an issue. I am assuming that the same people, like Senators Feinstein and McCain, who opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment, will rush to oppose this proposal. Why? Because of the reasons they gave for opposing FMA, specifically:

1. Gay marriage is already prohibited at the federal level by the Defense of Marriage Act;

2. The Constitution is a sacred document and we shouldn't tamper with it for political purposes (what could be more political than proposing an amendment to solve a non-existent problem, the likely result of which would be to stir up racial mistrust and energize black voters?); and

3. It tramples states' rights, because states are the entities that authorize marriages (just as states are the entities that determine who is and is not an eligible voter.)

Let's watch the latter-day George Wallaces, the born-again Federalists who opposed the FMA if they are confronted with a voting-rights amendment. I'm betting they won't sound like Justice Scalia again.

For all you Baby Boomers out there: are you at all surprised that the Democratic Party has nominated an admitted war criminal who committed atrocities against the Vietnamese people? Considering that many, if not most of the delegates were against the Vietnam War at the time? And isn't it strange that they not only put up with his relentless flag-waving, they cheered him?

The secular Left hates President Bush so much that it is willing to put aside its principles to see him defeated, thus creating a power vacuum that they can fill. That's the only plausible explanation. They are selling their message of hate to the wide segment of the American public that wants to hear a complaisant message. As Victor Davis Hanson says:

In a word, we have devolved into an infantile society in which our technological successes have wrongly suggested that we can alter the nature of man to our whims and pleasures — just like a child who expects instant gratification from his parents. In a culture where affluence and leisure are seen as birthrights, war, sacrifice, or even the mental fatigue about worrying over such things wear on us. So we construct, in a deductive and anti-empirical way, a play universe that better suits us.

UPDATE: A reader points out that Jane Fonda is not, in point of fact, actually dead. I'll stand by my headline, however, and I hope that a future version of Movable Type supports automatic humor-highlighting tags.

I met Deacon Fournier several years ago, and he is the embodiment of graciousness and enthusiasm. He has done great work for the Church in the public sphere, and his career shows his love of Christ and the Gospel.

Because there are so many good aspects of the article Sal mentions, I hesitate to disagree with any of it. However, there are some statements in the article with which I would quibble.

First, I do not share the contemporary distaste for retributive justice. Deacon Fournier says "Vengeance is never ours," and that is true: private individuals do not have the right to mete out justice privately. However, the state does have that right: Saint Paul made it very clear that the power of the sword, wielded by the state, is delegated by God, and therefore takes on a supernatural meaning. Earthly justice is neither perfect nor final, but it is not on the same level as a blood feud. The state can and must punish criminals, not simply to deter other evil men, but because it is right to deprive criminals of some personal good because they have acted to harm the public good.

Second, and more grievously, it's "Alex P. Keaton," not "Alex B Keaton." I was a big fan of Michael J. Fox's unapologetically conservative character on "Family Ties," and I cannot let the misspelling pass.

Third, there are entirely! too many! exclamation points!

Back to the serious stuff: there is no way that you could characterize the American economy as Darwinian. Governments at all levels comprise a third of the economy, and the vast majority of that spending goes to "human needs," not defense or law enforcement. Social spending comprises an ever-growing portion of the government, and has for the last century. That will not change, no matter who wins in November.

The article's last sentence is a cop-out: "However, God is not a Republican, nor is he a Democrat...and neither am I." If Deacon Fournier declines to align himself with a political party, then that is his right. He must follow his conscience just like the rest of us.

But his words seem to imply -- and I am not at all sure he means to say this -- that to choose a political party is therefore ungodly. I have the same problem with this as the whole "What Would Jesus Do?" fad. That's the wrong question. It should be, "What does Jesus want me to do?"

I do not think that Christians are called to stand aloof from history, or that it is contrary to the Gospel to take sides in great and significant national debates. Just as Jesus Christ entered history through the Incarnation, and continues to work in history through the Holy Spirit, we are called to work for God's justice on earth.

No political party holds a monopoly on Truth. Not even Holy Mother Church can claim that. We must discern the best way to live the truth, and then form allies and fight for the good. We, the laity, have that weighty responsibility. When Christ comes again, he will want to see some progress toward a more just world. Let's get cracking.

DNC’S NEW RELIGION ADVISOR WANTS “UNDER GOD” OUT OF THE PLEDGE

DNC’S RELIGION ADVISOR SAYS: “LOVE THY NEIGHBOR” MEANS PAYING TAXES

William Donahue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, say the DNC's new Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach is "a person who believes that ‘paying taxes is a way of loving your neighbor.’" Donahue cuts to the chase, "Maybe she’ll persuade Teresa Heinz Kerry to tell us how much she pays in taxes so we can get a handle on just how much the billionaire loves her neighbor."