"I Like Ike" -- but not Rush and Ann

John McCain (who's doing very well in tonight's primaries, by the way) isn't really my cup of tea. What I will grant him, however, is that he's a Republican with the traditional beliefs of a Republican. Not the "borrow and spend," neo-Conservative, damn the Bill of Rights, "the poor deserve their poverty," sort of Republican we've seen in the last few years. Ironically, because he sticks to the traditional beliefs of the Republican party, McCain's been damned as a RINO (Republican in Name Only) by today's idealogues.

Tonight, I bring a guest speaker to the Northwest Corner. An older guy with a military career behind him. A lifelong, "I Like Ike" Republican, a supporter of Barry Goldwater, a guy who even voted for the "W" in 2000. He supports McCain now, and spells out just what's wrong with today's Republican party.

I might suggest that if General Eisenhower were alive in 2008, he'd be running as a Democrat. He'd have to -- today's Republican party would never nominate him.

Here's what our anonymous guest speaker had to say in the on-line edition of today's New York Times:

I am a former conservative. I knew what I wanted to conserve–strong National defense, and I made a career of active military service. I voted for Goldwater and I consider Ike to be the greatest president by far of my adult life. I voted for Bush in 2000, but now consider his administration to be hideously flawed and the worst in our history.

Now I ask, what do conservatives want to conserve. Apparently not the environment, not manufacturing jobs in the US, not the middle and working classes, nor labor unions. If they support Bush, then they don’t want to conserve the Constitution, the rule of law, respect for science, or even the English language. In my estimation, they want to conserve greed, bronze age supernatural mythology, and redneck bigotry against gays, reproductive freedom of choice, and Latino immigration. They want to conserve their disregard for the unfortunate in our society.

McCain is a National hero and was correct in condemning vermin bigots like Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson. McCain was correct in condemning the criminally inept conduct of the war by the arrogant Rumsfeld. McCain has been correct in matters that matter most to average Americans. Today’s conservatives are the remnants of the intolerant and poorly educated denizens of dixie and the Bible belt, and are not representative of concerned and aware Americans. Coulter, Limbaugh, and fox noise do not speak for true Americans.

— Posted by bigjimbo

An endorsement

The New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton in its editorial pages yesterday. As the writer for the newspaper noted, Obama and Clinton have very similar views on issues of foreign and domestic policy. The race is not between conflicting policies, but between persons. The newspaper acknowledged Obama's strengths, and Clinton's weaknesses. The editorial encouraged Ms. Clinton to change the sometimes harsh tone of her campaign, to be more of a uniter and less of a divider.

But for the Times, the decisive issue is Hillary Clinton's "abiding, powerful intellect," and the depth of her knowledge and experience.

Well, gosh, if the New York Times can endorse candidates, why can't the Northwest Corner?

I agree with virtually everything stated in the fair and thoughtful Times editorial. I think either candidate would be an excellent president. But the critical factor not mentioned by the Times is "electability."

Obama inspires enthusiasm across a wide spectrum of Democrats and independents. Even some Republicans have tempting thoughts of jumping party lines in November. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, faces the undying hostility of a significant fraction of the voters. This hostility is unfair. It's based on nothing rational. Her opponents can't explain their hatred of Ms. Clinton, at least in terms that make any sense to a rational listener. Fear of strong women probably plays some part in this hostility, but is not the only factor. Many of her detractors would have had no difficulty in voting for Margaret Thatcher.

In any event, nothing that Clinton can do will win these voters over between now and November. They are beyond logical argument, and Hillary can't turn herself into Laura Bush, if that's what it would take. If we subtract the Hillary-haters, what's left? Are there enough swing voters so eager to punish the Republicans for the misrule of the past eight years that they will vote for Hillary over any Republican candidate? A Republican candidate who even some Democrats find attractive, such as John McCain?

I don't know. And I'm not willing to gamble. Unless there develops a mob of anti-black, anti-Obama voters that is every bit as large and rabid as the gang of anti-Hillary haters -- in which case, this country is really in trouble -- I'll support Obama because (1) he will make a strong president, and (2) he can win.

I plan to vote for Barack Obama in the Washington caucuses on February 9.

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NOTE (1-27-08): In this morning's edition, the Seattle Times endorsed Obama for the Democratic nomination.

A Tiny Ripple of Hope

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
--Robert F. Kennedy (1966)

This week, I've heard a haunting melody, a stirring rhythm, arising from the small towns and cornfields of Iowa; I've felt a trembling in the earth, a promise of change that sends a shiver down my spine. I feel the first tentative hope for the dawning of one more renewal in American political life, hope that arrives just when I feared we no longer were capable, or deserving, of such renewal.

Barack Obama. Age 46. Half Kenyan, half Kansan. A black man who speaks Indonesian, graduated from Hawaii's most exclusive prep school, and served as president of the Harvard Law Review. An Illinois liberal who speaks a new political language, a language that appeals to a broader audience. An African-American civil rights advocate who captures the hearts of white Iowa voters. A U.S. Senator. A successful middle-aged politician who can't help looking like a geeky kid speaking at graduation.

How unlikely a voice seems Mr. Obama's, how unlikely that his should be the voice crying in the wilderness, crying that we should make straight our paths. And yet. And yet, I dare to hope.

He would be but the latest avatar of an historical American type -- the political evangelist, calling the nation to renewal and to new achievement. We recall Teddy Roosevelt, leading the country forth from the corruption and torpor of the late 19th century. FDR, assuring us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself. Bobby Kennedy, quoting George Bernard Shaw: "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not."

But what is Barack Obama's program, skeptics ask? It's important to know, of course, and his Democratic rivals demand to know. If Obama has any hope of succeeding in his campaign, we will know more in coming weeks. But the details of his platform, as opposed to its broad outlines, matter little -- few campaign promises survive the crash and shock of unanticipated crises. They matter little, except insofar as they show the measure of the man.

Teddy Roosevelt's program was an unexceptional populism. FDR's New Deal often bordered on a form of fascism, and much of it was held unconstituional. Robert Kennedy stole Gene McCarthy's program, in many respects, and repackaged it in a form more digestible to more people.

The details of their programs were vague before they were elected (or assassinated), and in some respects were unworkable if and when enacted. The real legislative successes of these leaders were ones hammered out as the need arose, in consultation with leaders in Congress. What these men did give us, however, by force of their personality and their ability to "connect" with the electorate, was hope. Hope for a better America than was offered by the corporate greed of Gilded Age capitalism. Hope in the midst of the Depression for a return to prosperity. Hope for a return to peace in Vietnam, and for an America the young could once more love and respect.

Forty years after RFK electrified the nation, Barack Obama appears on the scene. Obama just may be offering our generation a new hope, hope for an escape from the gravest deadend and paralysis in American politics since the Civil War -- our seemingly irreversible polarization between two mutually hostile and uncomprehending factions.

It's too early to tell whether Obama is capable of carrying our dreams upon his shoulders, and offering back the hope we need. It's also too early to judge whether he has the qualities necessary to govern the nation as President, as opposed to simply inspiring it as orator. But, experience and detailed programs are not always presidential prerequisites. Presidents grow in office. Harry Truman was a political unknown (outside Missouri) when he became President.

Finally, I'm well aware that it is failing and floundering societies that hunger most urgently for inspiring, rather than simply competent, leaders. Such a hunger can be irrational and dangerous. Hitler and Mussolini each assumed such an inspirational role, seizing power when citizens in their own countries became fearful and desperate. Focus on the character of the leader rather than the workability of his proposals is risky.

But historically, we have been more fortunate than have countries like Germany and Italy. Our hunger for change has always been tempered by common sense. Our own political "saviors" -- our Roosevelts (both of them), our Kennedys, our Lincolns -- have been inspiring men, rational men -- not perfect men, but men who each led us out of the wilderness of his time and made the country governable once more by the capable but less charismatic Presidents who followed.

God, they say, has a special place in his heart for children, idiots, and the United States of America. Maybe so.

We live in interesting times. Let's keep our eyes and ears open and our hopes high in the weeks ahead.

Never Apologize, Never Explain

Maher Arar, 36, is a Canadian software engineer. He immigrated with his family from Syria to Canada in 1988, when he was 17. He earned his Bachelor's degree (computer engineering) from McGill University, perhaps the most prestigious university in Canada, and his Master's degree (telecommunications) from a branch of the University of Québec. While at McGill, he met his future wife, who went on to obtain her Ph.D. in finance from McGill. They have two young children. Mr. Arar ran his own consulting firm for some time, and then was employed as a telecommunications engineer by a firm in Ottawa.

In 2002, he and his family vacationed in Tunisia. On the way home to Ottawa, he flew through JFK in New York. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police mistakenly identified Mr. Arar as no longer a Canadian, although he was traveling on a Canadian passport. Also, the RCMP had been conducting a terrorist investigation in Ottawa, and had earlier observed a conversation between Arar and another engineer who happened to be a "person of interest" in the investigation. This engineer -- the one with whom he was seen speaking -- was not himself a suspect, nor, of course, was Mr. Arar.

Nevertheless, based on this information from the RCMP, the United States seized Mr. Arar as he was changing flights at JFK, interrogated him for two weeks in this country, refused him access to an attorney, and then flew him in a small jet to Syria. He was beaten upon arrival in Damascus.

He was imprisoned in a 6' x 3' cell without light, with rats as company, for ten months. He was tortured the entire time, beaten regularly by cables. Syrian authorities shared the results of his "interrogation" with the United States, and were given access to the results of his interrogation by American intelligence. He was released in October 2003, because the Syrians were unable to find any terrorist links. He was returned to Canada, where he has lived since with his family.

His capture and torture apparently was part of the Bush Administration's "rendition" program.

Arar's lawsuit against the United States is on appeal from its dismissal by a lower court, after the Administration invoked the "state secrets" privilege.

The Canadian government apologized for its part in the fiasco in January 2007, after a lengthy and thorough investigation, and paid Amar $10.5 million in compensation, plus his legal fees. Formal apologies were offered by both the RCMP and the Canadian government.

Former Attorney General Gonzales, on behalf of the Bush Administration, denied any evidence of torture, and asserted that Arar's rendition to Syria had been legal and fully within the Administration's rightful powers.

On October 18, 2007, Congressmen from both parties apologized to Mr. Arar and called on the Bush Administration to apologize on behalf of the nation. An Administration spokesman said there were no plans for an apology. Amar remains banned from entry into the United States.

Today, Secretary of State Rice did acknowledge that the matter had been "mishandled." Mistakes were made, apparently, although she did not use those words.

The Bush Administration still has not apologized.

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Information for this report was obtained from Wikipedia, and from two articles in MSNBC.

Priorities

When George W. Bush took office, one of his first moves was to eliminate the huge Clinton budget surplus by handing out massive tax breaks to people in the highest tax brackets. (The 2001 recession contributed to the deficit, but the tax cuts were the prime factor.)

In 2003, he dragged the country into Iraq. He refused to raise taxes to pay for it. Your kids and your grandkids will still be footing the bill for the disastrous "War Against Weapons of Mass Destruction," long after you've gone on to your reward. The Iraq war is estimated to cost approximately $2 billion per week.

But President Bush has now promised to veto a bill expanding health insurance benefits for low income children. The bill would add $35 billion to the program over a five-year period. (In other words, the cost of 17 weeks of war in Iraq.) The expansion would be financed not by printing money, but by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents per pack.

Good gracious. Where did the Great Decider's sudden concern for balancing the budget come from? Especially since the insurance would be financed by taxes on those persons who chose to worsen their own health and the health of people around them by smoking?

Bush has promised a veto, saying the measure is too costly, unacceptably raises taxes, extends government-covered insurance to children in families who can afford private coverage, and smacks of a move toward completely federalized health care.

Source: AP story, 9-22-07. Ah yes, "federalized health care." It all becomes clear. It's not the money, it's the principle of the thing.

Virtually all Democratic Congressman, and a substantial number of Republicans, support the expansion. Maybe Mr. Bush should get out and talk to doctors and hospital personnel -- and meet some of their young patients -- right there in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the cozy security of the Oval Office. Or even while back in God's country, Houston and Dallas.

Let him take a good look at the desperately ill children of low income families. Let the president look their parents in the eye, and explain to them his lofty theories about how they could have afforded private coverage if they'd really tried. And about how it's ok for the government to bail out banks when they make foolish home loans, but how when parents "fail" to find enough money to obtain health insurance, their kids simply have to live with the results of that "failure."

When forced to get out and meet voters where they shopped, while running for president, George Bush the Elder was amazed to discover that supermarkets had these new-fangled gadgets called check-out scanners. We were amazed that he was amazed. But who knows? Maybe son George W. might encounter some amazing epiphanies of his own -- if he ever emerged from his protective cocoon long enough to look around at the real world.

Empathy: Its Uses in Foreign Policy

em·pa·thy

[em-puh-thee] –noun

the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

The Sunday New York Times seems full of stories today that discuss the on-going meltdown of the Bush administration, stories provoked by this week's hasty resignation of Karl Rove, and by the continuing bad news from Iraq.

What went wrong over there? I don't discount the importance of conflicting intellectual approaches to geopolitics. But I wonder if many of this administration's difficulties don't stem from Republicans' traditionally poor sense of empathy for persons from backgrounds unlike their own.

We usually think of "empathy" as benefitting the person with whom we empathize. But the ability to get "inside the skin" of others also benefits the empathizer. Every salesman, businessman, attorney, advertiser, public relations consultant needs to understand how others think and feel. No one ever disputes this need when dealing with other Americans. And yet, even a highly successful American business frequently falls flat on its face when it attempts to sell goods and services abroad. Its sales force fails to understand the minds, customs, emotions, and motivations of the people to whom they're trying to make the sale.

"You gotta know the territory," as the itinerant salesmen sang in "The Music Man."

The Bush administration didn't know the territory before it went into Iraq. I doubt if its officials do now. Back in 2003, the organizers of the Iraq debacle seemed almost gleeful in discounting and ignoring the opinions of career officers in the State Department, persons who may have had some sense of the history, culture, ideals, taboos, aspirations, and daily lives of Iraqis and other Arab peoples. I pick on the Bush administration, because I disagree with it in so many respects, but this same failure is endemic historically in American foreign policy. Not understanding what makes others tick is a very human weakness, but if we are to have a successful foreign policy, it's a weakness we can't afford.

The British Foreign Office, stuffy as it may have been at the height of the Empire, nevertheless put up with eccentrics like Lawrence of Arabia, Arab head dress and all, just so long as his expertise remained of use. We desperately need such expertise, wherever we can find it.

Republicans need to recognize in themselves -- and I speak only in generalities, of course -- an even greater than average tendency to narrow their horizons to the set of people and peoples who look, act, dress, talk, and feel like themselves. Republicans have to force themselves -- in their role as government officials, regardless of their preferences in their private lives -- to expand their universe, to learn to understand -- to empathize with, if you will -- peoples very unlike themselves. Over the years, Republicans can expect to control foreign policy roughly fifty percent of the time. As a nation, we can't afford another two presidential terms of foreign policy like those now approaching an end.

Most of us -- at least, those of us apt to be reading this blog -- spent some time, during or shortly after college, bumming around foreign countries. Those were times we rubbed shoulders with all kinds of foreigners, both locals and other travelers, because we didn't have the money to shut ourselves off in expensive hotels. I think that experience provided us with a sense, at least, that human life is rich in the multitude of ways it can be led, that humans can live lives in ways very different from our own with very different objectives, and still live lives that they find deeply meaningful. They may envy our wealth and the comfort of our lives, but many are unwilling to buy our external affluence by abandoning the riches of their own internal traditions.

Maybe all future foreign policy appointees, when facing Senate confirmation hearings, should be forced to respond to certain questions: How many youth hostels have you ever stayed in, and in what parts of the world? With how many local families have you lived abroad? Ever been so broke overseas that you hitchhiked? With how many fellow students in foreign countries did you ever discuss politics, economics, jobs, education, religion, love, sex, family life -- not as a debate but kicking ideas around informally, over a beer or lying on your backs staring at the stars? How have all these experiences affected you?

Republicans like "litmus tests." This might be a good one to implement.

Photo: Future voters. Kargil, India. 2005.

"Do you think Oz could give me courage?"

cow·ard·li·ness, noun
—Synonyms 1. craven, poltroon, dastardly, pusillanimous, fainthearted, white-livered, lily-livered, chicken-hearted, fearful, afraid, scared.

Forty-one Democratic members of the House, worried about voter perceptions and delay in their August recess, joined virtually all Republicans in voting 227-183 yesterday to chip another block off the Fourth Amendment. Prior Congressional capitulations to the Bush/Cheney Administration had already permitted the Justice Department to intercept and wire-tap -- without any warrant and without any court review --all telephone calls or e-mails in which either one of the parties lived outside the United States. The new statute now grants Attorney General Alberto Gonzales exclusive power to determine whether he "reasonably believes" that one of the parties does, in fact, reside outside the U.S.

Many Democrats argued that the bill was unconstitutional, interfered with supervision by the courts, and placed unfettered power in the hands of an attorney general whose trustworthiness has proved, to be gentle, questionable

Nevertheless, 41 Democrats voted to give Bush exactly what he wanted (although they did limit the authorization to six months). They feared that if they voted against the bill, the voters would think they were "soft on terrorism." They did not seem concerned by the widespread perception that they were "soft on unconstitutional abrogation of powers by the executive," and that they were essentially spineless and unable to fight for the principles they claimed to support. They were also concerned that continued delay in approving the measure was cutting into their much-valued August recess.

Unfortunately, the New York Times so far has not published the official roll call, enabling Democratic and Independent voters to determine the identities of the cowardly Democratic Congressmen who voted for the Bush scheme

John Hancock, upon signing the Declaration of Independence with a large flourish, reportedly joked: "There, I guess King George will be able to read that!" Hancock was not concerned that he would be "perceived" as a traitor to a different King George. He didn't fret about the fears his wealthy political supporters had of rabble-rousing separatists like Thomas Paine. He wasn't concerned about escaping the July heat of Philadelphia, so he could take his summer vacation.

But then, John Hancock had a backbone. He was not a coward.

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PS -- Aug. 6 -- The New York Times still has not provided the names of the Cowardly Forty-One. However, here are the names, thanks to Speeple News, an on-line magazine:

Jason Altmire (4th Pennsylvania)

John Barrow (12th Georgia)

Melissa Bean (8th Illinois)

Dan Boren (2nd Oklahoma)

Leonard Boswell (3rd Iowa)

Allen Boyd (2nd Florida)

Christopher Carney (10th Pennsylvania)

Ben Chandler (6th Kentucky)

Jim Cooper (5th Tennessee)

Jim Costa (20th California)

Bud Cramer (5th Alabama)

Henry Cuellar (28th Texas)

Artur Davis (7th Alabama)

Lincoln Davis (4th Tennessee)

Joe Donnelly (2nd Indiana)

Chet Edwards (17th Texas)

Brad Ellsworth (8th Indiana)

Bob Etheridge (North Carolina)

Bart Gordon (6th Tennessee)

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (South Dakota)

Brian Higgins (27th New York)

Baron Hill (9th Indiana)

Nick Lampson (23rd Texas)

Daniel Lipinski (3rd Illinois)

Jim Marshall (8th Georgia)

Jim Matheson (2nd Utah)

Mike McIntyre (7th North Carolina)

Charlie Melancon (3rd Louisiana)

Harry Mitchell (5th Arizona)

Colin Peterson (7th Minnesota)

Earl Pomeroy (North Dakota)

Ciro Rodriguez (23rd Texas)

Mike Ross (4th Arkansas)

John Salazar (3rd Colorado)

Heath Shuler (11th North Carolina)

Vic Snyder (2nd Arkansas)

Zachary Space (18th Ohio)

John Tanner (8th Tennessee)

Gene Taylor (4th Mississippi)

Timothy Walz (1st Minnesota)

Charles A. Wilson (6th Ohio)

No one from Washington, thank God. But anyone living in Colorado's Third District, may want to write Mr. Salazar.

Scooter Skedaddles

President Bush today commuted the 2 1/2 year prison sentence handed out to former Cheney aide "Scooter" Libby. The jail sentence, following conviction on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, had been imposed by a Bush appointee to the federal bench. The sentence was called "excessive" by the president. The president acted after the U.S. Court of Appeals announced that there was no valid reason to delay Libby's imprisonment pending appeal.

The president, taking time from his Maine meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin, noted that Libby was a "first time offender with years of exceptional public service."

Hours later, the White House announced that President Bush would begin an investigation into all prison sentences handed down over the past five years by the federal courts. A presidential commission will identify all first time offenders with previously blameless lives. The president will commute the prison sentences of all such first offenders.

"It's only fair," stated a spokesman for the president. "The eyes of the world are upon us. After all, we aren't some banana republic where the generalissimo's henchmen get special treatment."

Cassandra's Voice

Sometimes I read an essay that's so good that I think, "Wow, that's great, I couldn't have said it better myself." I've developed a subconscious protocol for handling such material.

My neurotransmitters immediately route the essay to my brain's "Cool Idea Storage Unit" (CISU). On its way, my Rhetorical Processing Unit (RPU) filters the essay through my cerebral delamination filters, where it is stripped of its author's name, place of origin, and, indeed, any internal suggestion that the essay has already been written and published. The delaminated essay next passes through a brain stem neuro-centrifuge, where the connective tissues binding the ideas and the phrases contained in the original essay are dissolved. They are then stocked in Immediate Access Storage (IAS) in random form, like a stack of so much lumber. The neuro-centrifuge's solvent is designed to leave clever analogies, stirring phrases and bons mots in general untouched and fully intact for appropriate re-use.

All these ideas and phrases, thus stocked in Immediate Access Storage (IAS), are by that time totally removed from their original context, and available for my "innocent" use in my own writing. The next time I feel inclined to write on the same or similar subject, they pop into my consciousness, one by one, as though handed to me by my Muse, while I write. I naively believe that, thus inspired, I am engaged in "creativity." We call this process "unconscious plagiarism."

Occasionally, however, an essay or editorial is so true and so clearly written that I'm moved to overrule this unconscious process, and republish it as it was written, with full attribution to its author. That is how I felt today, after reading a column in the Seattle Times, written by Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey. The column discusses the wisdom of Rep. Ron Paul, the predictable fact that the Republicans will ignore his wisdom, and the fate, as a consequence, of the Republican Party in 2008. I quote the conclusion of the column:

It is fairly clear now that America will leave Iraq, and not in triumph. It will be tempting for the Republicans to blame the result on the Democrats, because that would mean that the Republicans were "right" in some theoretical way. But they were not right. They did not understand Iraq, or the history of imperialism or much of anything beyond knocking over Saddam Hussein.

In foreign affairs, the Republicans are our nationalist party, and there is a role for that. But they need to question the idea of a "global war on terror." The 9/11 attacks were acts of desperation by 19 men with box cutters. What these men did looked and felt like acts of war, but really it was an audacious crime, planned and executed by a political gang financed with private money.

Fighting such gangs is the job of cops, security workers, customs agents, G-men, diplomats and alert citizens. It is an important task, but we are not at war. America hasn't been attacked in nearly six years.

Republicans need to settle on a foreign policy that asserts American interests in a realistic and humane way. Whether they go as far as the noninterventionism of Ron Paul is another question, but they have to jettison the Bush policy of preemptive war. That the leading Republican contenders refuse to question that policy is a sign that they have not learned and, 17 months from now, will not win.

Not a prayer, Rudy

Has former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani lost his mind? In a speech in Houston, yesterday, he told fellow Republicans that his personal views on gun control, abortion, and gay rights were not the most important concerns facing the United States of America today. He said they'd be better off worrying more about winning the 2008 election than in choosing a nominee who is pristine in his right wing social ideology.

In the real (i.e., non-Republican) world, such a speech would hardly raise an eyebrow. As Democrats and independents approach the next presidential election, they hope and intend to select a President who is capable of ending the war in Iraq, controlling the threat of global terrorism, restoring respect for American ideals and conduct, combating world-wide poverty, placing social security and Medicare on a sound financial footing, restoring fairness to the tax laws, making American industry competitive globally (insofar as can be done by public policies), and ensuring that increases in national prosperity are shared to some degree by all levels of our society.

Most of these goals, if not always the means, are shared by the great majority of Americans. Some are more divisive. But they are all natural subjects of public policy at the federal level. Which policies are to be adopted will depend upon the party in power.

Giuliani pointed out the importance of such national issues, as contrasted with the “social issues” that are divisive even among Republicans, and that are of importance only at a personal and, perhaps, state level. He urged members of his party to focus on legitimate national issues, the ones of concern to most voters, if they hope to retain the White House after 2008.

Hardly newsworthy, in normal times, right? But Tony Perkins, a right wing religious leader, responded immediately: “When people hear Rudy Giuliani speak about taxpayer-funded abortions, gay ‘rights’ and gun control, they don’t hear a choice, they hear an echo of Hillary Clinton.” (Why Christians, conservative or otherwise, would be opposed to gun control is not clear to me; why Hillary Clinton seems the apotheosis of “Liberal” also puzzles me.)

Pundits immediately declared that no Republican could win nomination while standing on the “libertarian” ground that Giuliani has staked out. That appears correct. The Republican party, as an organization, is now largely the political wing of the Southern Baptist church, with some additional allies from other groups in the Mid West.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” --George Santayana

Democrats have been through all this before. In 1972, they nominated George McGovern, who was defeated in a landslide by an unpopular president who also was bogged down in an unpopular war. An anti-Vietnam war campaign, competently run, should have won in 1972. The McGovern campaign ran into many problems, including Nixon's “dirty tricks” operations. But the single most important reason for the size of his defeat was the public perception that McGovern was a freaky, extreme liberal whose views on many issues, the war aside, were far outside the mainstream.

This public perception was fed by an unruly Democratic convention, largely managed by political amateurs and single-interest enthusiasts, accompanied by loud televised demonstrations supporting issues that to “normal” Americans of the time seemed Communist and/or “hippy,” and that were supported by demonstrators and delegates who looked bearded, long-haired, freaky, stoned, obscene, and, in a word, totally un-American.

My point is that the Democrats suffered in 1972 -- and for years afterward -- from having turned their party over to its far left wing. (Whether that wing was right or wrong on the issues is irrelevant for this discussion.) The Republicans show every sign of heading in the same direction next year, albeit in their own typical manner -- duller, buttoned-up, more boring, less imaginative -- but appearing just as loony to the voters.

As a Democrat, I should be happy that Giuliani doesn’t have a prayer of winning the 2008 nomination from his party’s convention in St. Paul. But as an American, I’d like to see a campaign in which the two parties debate legitimate national issues crucial to our era. Such a campaign requires two parties that agree on the issues that are legitimate and important, but disagree on the solutions. I don’t see such a campaign occurring.

I see the Democrats and Republicans talking past each other, like two ships passing in the night.

Edward III: A Medieval Fable

In medieval England, the King had far more power than did the feudal kings ruling over other lands. He had direct authority over all parts of his realm. His officials dealt directly with all his subjects. His rule was not limited to simply commanding fealty from his feudal barons.

The English king's power also was enhanced by the substantial sources of income at his disposal.

But his supply of money was not unlimited, and war -- even in those days -- was expensive.

And by 1376, England was exhausted after nearly forty years of fighting the French monarch -- the so-called Hundred Years War. The technical rationale for the war was Edward III's claim to be King of France, as well as King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, etc., etc., etc., but the war developed many confusing subplots. The King of England already controlled a large portion of present day France before the war began, and most of his battles were fought over possession of territory, cities and castles. His knights often waged war simply for the sake of war, leading to indiscriminate slaughter, not only of soldiers but also "collateral damage" to common citizens and destruction of their homes and farms.

The real objectives of the war were not always clear, and the military campaigns undertaken were not always clearly directed to accomplishment of any specific objective.

By 1376, Edward III had ruled for two and a half years without calling Parliament into session. He preferred not to face Parliament, because he recognized the great dissatisfaction throughout England over his conduct of the war, the corruption among his officials, and other issues. His earlier dispatch of the Black Prince to France to manage the war effort had led to the capture of the city of Limoges and the slaughter of all of its inhabitants. This English "surge" had only increased anti-English sentiment among the French, and now English coastal cities themselves were being threatened by French "terrorists."

Finally, with the war clearly not going well and having exhausted all of his royal sources of income in paying for it, the King was forced to call Parliament into session to vote him additional taxes. As Professor J. P. Sommerville writes on his University of Wisconsin website:

Parliament's self-assertion peaked in the "Good Parliament" (1376.) The combination of high taxation and military failure in France produced a parliament determined to reform government. It attacked many of Edward III's ministers for corruption.

A newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons took the initiative in standing up to the king. According to a Wikipedia article,

Peter de la Mare, a knight representing Hereford, had been elected as Speaker by the House of Commons, and on the first day he delivered an address criticizing England's recent military failures, condemning the corruption at court, and calling for close scrutiny of the royal accounts.

The King was forced to give the royal assent to various reforms voted by Parliament in order to obtain the necessary funds to continue fighting the war.

The Good Parliament, as it became known, was not only popular at the time, but has remained enshrined in English history as one of the landmarks in the development of the modern British concept that the King acts only through Parliament or, in effect, that Parliament governs the nation in the name of the King.

Curiously enough, no one in these history books criticizes the Good Parliament, or its Speaker, for not supporting the English troops on the ground in France. Not even King Edward III himself, so far as we know, ever exclaimed: "If we're not going to stand up to them in France, we're not going to take them on in France and defeat them there, where and when will we do it?"

I guess those were primitive times. Six centuries later, our wiser leaders can only look back and shake their heads.

Judicial Murder

"Lethal Injection Procedures," as officially established by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation:

In advance of the execution, syringes containing the following are prepared:

5.0 grams of sodium pentothal in 20-25 cc of diluent

50 cc of pancuronium bromide

50 cc of potassium chloride

Each chemical is lethal in the amounts administered.

At the warden’s signal, sodium pentothal is administered, then the line is flushed with sterile normal saline solution. This is followed by pancuronium bromide, a saline flush, and finally, potassium chloride. As required by the California Penal Code, a physician is present to declare when death occurs.

In 129 nations, the death penalty has either been officially abolished, or not used for at least ten years.

Twenty-five countries still use the death penalty. The only European nation to still execute its prisoners is Belarus.

The nations making the Top Ten for number of judicial killings in 2006 are as follows:

China
Iran
Pakistan
Iraq
Sudan
United States of America
Saudi Arabia
Yemen
Vietnam
Kuwait

We're in fine company.

No further comment.

Birth of a Wallflower

[T]he Bush administration prefers talking to nobody unless it finds somebody who thinks more or less the way it does. And folks like that are fewer and fewer.

--Christopher Dickey (Newsweek)

Mr. Dickey sums up succinctly a major theme of present U.S. (i.e., Bush's) foreign policy. He compares present-day America to a stalled semi, blocking traffic in the middle of the freeway: You can't ignore it, "but if you can squeeze by, you do, and a lot of the time you’re honking your horn."

Read today's news. Speaker Pelosi visits Syria. Syria is a major power in the Middle East, centrally located, and critical to the peace process. But Syria is naughty, according to this administration. VP Cheney appears all red-faced, hopping up and down, screaming, and generally throwing a tantrum because Pelosi is talking to Syria.

Or take Iran. Sure, it's a country led by an erratic president, with real power held by conservative mullahs. But it's a huge country, non-Arab, with a society that's far more Western, middle-class, and historically sympathetic to our values than that of Iraq.

Everyone in this country (not just Bush) is totally confused at what's going on politically behind the scenes in Iran. We desperately need to understand Iranians better, and to make personal contacts across their entire political and religious spectrum. But no way! Iran is part of Bush's "Axis of Evil." Official -- even informal -- contacts are out of the question. So we beg the Saudis -- a nation that, one day, you just know, will cause us problems -- to find out for us what's going on and to let us know all the gossip.

"Betty, I'm not talking to Heather. She's a brat! So pleaaaase ... do me a big favor and find out if Heather's still friends with Trisha, and if she's REALLY gonna go out with Justin, ok?"

Mr. Dickey is overly generous in comparing the U.S. to a stalled trucker. We are more like the spoiled little girl who turns up her nose at other kids who aren't "good enough" for her. Soon, she's talking only to a couple of hangers-on, non-threatening kids who don't have other friends.

The poor little rich girl inevitably ends up in tears; no one ever bothers inviting her to their parties anymore.

We may be reaching the point where other nations throw their own party in the Middle East, serving barrels of petroleum for refreshments, and absent-mindedly "forget" to invite the U.S. and its pathetic little shadow, the U.K.

Like, 1984, or whatever

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. … In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

--George Orwell

The only critic to date of this, my new blog, has urged me to write something "profound." Immediate stage fright was the predictable result. Profundity on demand has never been my strong point. But then I began thinking, as I’m wont to do, about Bush, Cheney & Co., and their heroic efforts to create an Imperial Presidency. Perhaps, I thought, some startling epiphany from Orwell’s 1984 might be an appropriate starting point.

Well, I didn’t find the quotation I was looking for, but I did come up with the interesting insight quoted above.

George Orwell had the Soviet Union of Stalin’s day in mind when he wrote 1984, back in the 1940's, but his observations aren’t merely a criticism of that Communist regime, or of Communism in general. His book provides a handy dandy manual, in the form of parody, wide open to any person or group hoping to gain total control over a society. "Big Brother," and the leaders of the world’s other two, supposedly competing empires, realized fully that a nation mobilized to fight an enemy is a nation willing to sacrifice much to avoid defeat, just as a fox with his foot snared in a trap will, in desperation, bite off its foot to escape. They then concluded – correctly -- that continuous war would result in continuous sacrifice. The enemy might change from time to time, to prevent any slackening of interest among the citizenry, but war itself always went on. Sacrifices from the masses would always be required, and would always be given by their frightened subjects.

The war in Iraq serves the same function. Democrats, disturbed by the “business as usual” money-making on the home front, complain that the Bush administration demands no sacrifice in time of war from anyone other than our soldiers overseas. But Bush, in fact, has sought and won far greater sacrifices from us than food rationing or higher taxes. He has asked us to surrender our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. And out of fear and political timidity, we have handed them over.

From 9/11 to the present, Bush has used the war to justify one increase in executive power after another, at the expense of both Congress (simply ignoring Congress’s right to declare war and participate in war planning) and the Judiciary (depriving the federal courts of jurisdiction over claims from all persons designated by the Administration as “enemy combatants”; permitting surveillance of our mail and our phone conversations without court warrant).

“I am the decider,” President Bush reminds us.

Precedents do exist for significant increases in executive power in times of war. President Lincoln famously suspended habeas corpus (a suspension, it should be noted, that is explicitly permitted by the Constitution), and President Roosevelt ordered evacuation from the West Coast of all persons, citizen and non-citizen alike, of Japanese ancestry. These events did not represent our proudest moments as a nation, but they arguably could be justified as extraordinary actions at a time of extraordinary peril.

But, as President Bush fondly reminds us, we are now protagonists in a war that may never end. War is now continuous, to hearken back to Orwell, and extraordinary peril exists now and will continue to exist , tomorrow, and every day for the rest of our lives, and every day of our children’s lives. If we “win” in Afghanistan (which we certainly haven’t yet), we still confront massive bloodshed in Iraq. If we finally subjugate Iraq, we will face nuclear threats from Iran. If we nuke Iran into oblivion, we can only assume that China, India, other developing powers that we call allies today will be enemies, understandably, threatening us tomorrow.

When extraordinary peril exists every day, justifying extraordinary dictatorial measures as a matter of routine, then the extraordinary is no longer extraordinary. It is ordinary. And we then live under a government possessing attributes of dictatorship. Perhaps we can view it as a benign dictatorship today. President Bush himself, feckless frat boy that he is, probably enjoys a jolly weekend clearing brush on his Texas ranch more than he would signing orders for the torture of dissidents. But the power gained today by a bumbling fool can be used far more shrewdly by a “commander in chief” of a malign administration tomorrow, a President who will be neither bumbling nor a fool. And when that happens, we will no longer laugh at funny cartoons in the newspapers, or jokes on late night television, at the expense of those who control the executive branch of our government.

Because one does not laugh at Big Brother. As Orwell wrote, it is not enough that Big Brother's subjects consent to obey him. They must be compelled to love him. And we will not laugh at the leader who, finally, we have been taught to love and obey.