The War on Lincoln

Responding to Newt Gingrich's calls for Lincoln-Douglas style debates with President Obama, Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer argues that far from emulating those famous debates, Gingrich, along with the rest of us, should leave that idea in the dustbin.  Here is Holzer:

These lengthy rhetorical bouts tested the endurance of the audiences and the candidates. Rather than inspiring memorable words, they proved for the most part an embarrassment. The encounters were brutally sarcastic, featuring highly personal attacks rather than elevated discourse.

In his view, Holzer sees that the "bigotry" and "racism" of the both participants should also give use pause as well:

Still, no friendly editing could disguise the debaters’ shortcomings, including their open prejudice. Both men used the N-word — a term that, even then, shocked some. Douglas, who voiced horror at the sight of African American leader Frederick Douglass riding around town in a carriage driven by a white man, maintained that American democracy was created only “for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever.” While Lincoln insisted that the Declaration of Independence applied to all, he also descended into bigotry, acknowledging the “physical difference” between whites and blacks. In the fourth debate, he went further.

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” he declared in Charleston, Ill., to robust cheers, “nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, or having them to marry with white people.” It was not the future emancipator’s finest hour.

This is really bad analysis and completely misses the whole point of what Lincoln at that time was trying to achieve.  Ken Thomas at No Left Turns rightly calls Holzer's Lincoln credentials into question in this statement:

This is mediocre historian shallowness, which ignores what Lincoln might do in the future--shown clearly by the Emancipation Proclamation, his allowing blacks to fight in the Union army, and his early policies for reintegrating the South. Lincoln had no reason to speak of such civil and political equality, when most blacks were slaves. This superficiality breeds ignorant Lincoln haters and other cyncial leftists who despise their country. Though Holzer describes well the excitement of the debates, he, like most historians, simply doesn't see the principles involved. Ultimately, he does not understand the subjects as they understood themselves.

And here is Harry Jaffa in A New Birth of Freedom--the best book ever written on Lincoln--on Lincoln's supposed racism and bigotry:

Throughout the slavery controversy, Lincoln is careful to avoid contesting the question of the equality or inequality of the races “in the gifts of nature.”  Given the overwhelming prejudices of white America, North as well as South, it would have been senseless for him to do otherwise.  He is at great pains, however, to argue that this question is irrelevant to the question of the justice or injustice of slavery.  To have contended for anything more than freedom would only have endangered whatever prospects for freedom there might have been.  Yet careful analysis of Lincoln’s many references to the intelligence or abilities of Negroes shows amazingly little actual concession to the prejudices of his contemporaries, even while seeming not to contradict them. . .

 Lincoln’s characteristic expression was, “Certainly the negro is not our equal in color—perhaps not in many other respects.”  The only inequality that was “certain,” according to Lincoln, was color.  Only the prejudices of his audiences would find such a judgment of Negro inferiority in such an assertion.  Yet Lincoln would continue, in a phrase that, with minor variations, he repeated endlessly: “still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black.”  The contrast between the ambiguity of what Lincoln says about Negro inequality and the unambigiuousness of what he says about Negro equality is striking.

Holzer displays one the great pitfalls of modern education:  the belief that we can understand those in the past better than they understood themselves.  Holzer completely misses the prudence and judgement in Lincoln's actions and condemns him for things for which he did in a just manner.    

Gingrich on National Health Care

John McCormack of the Weekly Standard picked up on an interesting story on what Newt Gingrich had to say all the way back in 2009 regarding national health care mandates.  Gingrich has maintained that while he was supportive of the individual mandate in the 90's (as was the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think-tanks), he later abandoned that view.  But here is Gingrich in 2009:

"It is encouraging and it will be fascinating to watch now as that moves into a more detailed negotiation," he said.

Gingrich added that "we believe that there should be must carry – that is, everybody should either have health insurance or if you’re an absolute libertarian, we would allow you to post a bond, but we would not allow people to be free riders failing to insure themselves and then showing up at the emergency room with no means of payment. If you have must-carry, then the insurance companies have told us that we can have must-issue, and then you don't have to worry about cherry-picking and maneuvering."

"As we move beyond today's press conference at the White House, this is the kind of general model that we're going to be advocating."

Here is the blog Verum Serum on the context of these statements at that time:

Well, here you have it: not only has Gingrich been a long-standing proponent of a federal health insurance mandate, he clearly and unequivocally called for it as part of the White House health reform initiative in May 2009. Mission accomplished then.

There is something else worth noting in this clip. Not only did Gingrich make the “conservative” argument for the mandate in dealing with the free rider problem, he also advanced a favorite argument of the left. Which is that the only way insurers could be required to offer coverage to everyone regardless of their health status (“must issue”), was to require everyone to carry insurance. This was ultimately the argument which convinced none other than Barack Obama, who remember, opposed an individual mandate during the Democrat primary campaign in 2008.

Friedman's World

Thomas Friedman today wrote the following in his Sunday New York Times column:

The Associated Press reported last week that Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba, wrote an opinion piece on a Cuban Web site, following a Republican Party presidential candidates’ debate in Florida, in which he argued that the “selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”

When Marxists are complaining that your party’s candidates are disconnected from today’s global realities, it’s generally not a good sign. But they’re not alone. 

Well, now that the Republicans have lost Castro, it looks pretty bleak for them in 2012...

I Know Abraham Lincoln and You Sir Are No Abraham Lincoln

In his SOTU speech last week, President Obama once again linked himself to Abraham Lincoln when he stated the following:

I’m a Democrat.  But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed:  That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.  (Applause.)  That’s why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and states.  That’s why we’re getting rid of regulations that don’t work.  That’s why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program. 

However, Dr. Harry Jaffa, the greatest living Lincoln scholar, disagrees.  Here is what he had to say:

Professor Jaffa noted that this quotation leaves out a great deal. The 93-year-old Jaffa recited the full statement from Lincoln’s speech, “The Nature and Objects of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery” (July 1, 1854) by memory:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”

Notice the difference? The emphasis is on the need to have done, not on government doing the action. “That distinction was missing from his quotation,” Jaffa explains. Yet Obama has repeatedly invoked this misleading Lincoln quotation on both the campaign trail and during his presidency.

Lincoln's politics revolved around natural rights, or rights that are antecedent to the creation of any government whatsoever; these rights are true everywhere because they derive from a permanent human nature.  Modern liberalism completely rejects this because, as they say, who are we to force our values on anyone else?    

Jaffa on Lincoln's political philosophy and the difference between small government and limited government (I also talked about this topic in this post):

Now, to be fair, Jaffa stresses that the founders’ vision isn’t for a small government, but a limited one necessary to protect its powers. Part of Lincoln’s genius, he said, was combining Jeffersonian ideals with Hamiltonian policy. Like the good Whig he once was, Lincoln favored infrastructure projects as a means of promoting the “American system” to increase trade.

[...]

But conservatives, especially libertarians, have it wrong when they call for smaller government, Jaffa argues, because while the Founders believed in limited government, they often also favored measures such as levying tariffs, allowing the federal government to assume the debt of the states, and creating the National Bank. ”If Ron Paul were president, then, we wouldn’t have purchased Louisiana. Thomas Jefferson did,” Jaffa said.

If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Jaffa's work, the last paragraph would seem to indicate that the even the Founders themselves were unconcerned with the Constitution when push came to shove.  Not true at all.  Jaffa is merely indicating is that there is huge difference between small government, or the government we had previously under the Articles of Confederation, and the limited government the Founders created under the Constitution--one of enumerated powers but energetic enough in its administration to properly be called a government.

In the Name of Fairness

Charles Krauthammer has some great insight in his weekend column on President Obama's soak the rich arguments, which once again reared their ugly head again in his SOTU.  Here is Charles:

There isn’t even a pretense that the Buffett Rule will do anything for economic growth or job creation (other than provide lucrative work for the sharp tax lawyers who will be gaming the new system for the very same rich). Which should not surprise. Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains-tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenues.

Obama said yes. In the name of fairness.

This is redistribution for its own sake — the cost be damned.

He is exactly right.  Even if taxes were raised on the richest one percent of all earners to 100%, that would only cover one-third of the debt for this past year.  This is really about enacting the high principle of fairness at the expense of equality as understood by the Founders.  Contrary to devoting ourselves to fairness, we should devote ourselves to the proposition that all men are created equal; flowing from that is the principle of equal opportunity, that all should have the opportunity for success.

Here is Matthew Spaulding from the Heritage Foundation on equality rightly understood:

Americans believe in equality as a principle – as in we are all created equal and are all equal before the law.  They support equal opportunity for everyone-a deeply American concept that makes no appearance in Obama’s speech.  That’s because equal opportunity for all also leads to vast differences, great diversity and much inequality in many things-which is the natural outgrowth of liberty and human flourishing.  What Americans oppose is a vast government trying to make all outcomes equal-regardless of individual effort.

Marching in Lockstep

Because I wanted to say as little as possible about Obama's SOTU speech on Tuesday, I overlooked an important argument from the president that was seemingly odd but completely within the realm of progressivism.  Here is Obama on putting military virtue in place of civilian virtue:

At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, [the American Armed Forces] exceed all expectations.  They’re not consumed with personal ambition.  They don’t obsess over their differences.  They focus on the mission at hand.  They work together. 

Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.  (Applause.)  Think about the America within our reach:  A country that leads the world in educating its people.  An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs.  A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.  An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

This has been the clarion call of progressives for generations:  the removal of any impediment to "getting things done."  The impediments for progressives include the Constitution, the principles of the Declaration, separation of powers, federalism, and politics rightly understood.  For them, Americans should simply fall in line and paper over any differences, because in reality, there are no longer any crucial disagreements about the most important things.

Here is Jonah Goldberg on this idea:

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I’ve seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President. 

And:

I don’t blame the president for being exhausted with the mess and bother of democracy and politics, since he has proved so inadequate at coping with the demands of both. Nor do I think he truly seeks to impose martial virtues on America. But he does desperately want his opponents to shut up and march in place. And he seems to think this bilge will convince them to do so.

And here is George Will:

Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands. As a young professor, Woodrow Wilson had lamented that America’s political parties “are like armies without officers.” The most theoretically inclined of progressive politicians, Wilson was the first president to criticize America’s founding. This he did thoroughly, rejecting the Madisonian system of checks and balances — the separation of powers, a crucial component of limited government — because it makes a government that cannot be wielded efficiently by a strong executive.

I wonder if Obama and his speechwriters have been reading too much Thomas Friedman?

Proverbs 25:11

I don't know if you caught the debate last night but in case you didn't, here is a good recap by Jay Nordlinger.

One of the highlights of the debate was when an audience member asked the candidates a question regarding how each one's religious belief would affect their decisions as president.  Here is Rick Santorum's answer:

SANTORUM: Faith is a very, very important part of my life, but it's a very, very important part of this country. The foundational documents of our country -- everybody talks about the Constitution, very, very important. But the Constitution is the "how" of America. It's the operator's manual.

The "why" of America, who we are as a people, is in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights."

The Constitution is there to do one thing: protect God-given rights. That's what makes America different than every other country in the world. No other country in the world has its rights -- rights based in God-given rights, not government-given rights.

And so when you say, well, faith has nothing to do with it, faith has everything to do with it. If rights come...

(APPLAUSE)

If our president believes that rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away.

And so the answer to that question is, I believe in faith and reason and approaching the problems of this country but understand where those rights come from, who we are as Americans and the foundational principles by which we have changed the world.

If he doesn't get the nomination--which the prospects unfortunately look pretty slim right now--he needs to be somehow involved with teaching and educating Ameircans on American Founding principles in the next administration.

Class Warfare vs. the American Founding

Ken Thomas at No Left Turns has a very thoughtful post on the always important subject of political language.  Ken argues that the language of class warfare hurts the conservative argument against the president and, on a larger scale, against the foundations of modern liberalism.  Here is Ken:

I'm not talking about Newt and Mitt, but about the "class warfare" complaint hurled against Obama. This attack in fact affirms Obama's point--that there are classes, two (or three) Americas, as it were. Such rhetoric reflects the victory of the Progressive mentality, which was to reject the individual rights and limited government language of the American Founding, in favor of talk about the progress of history and a ruling class of civil servants--nonpartisan, scientific administrators. That is the real "class warfare" that needs to be fought, but Republicans flunked American history. In fact Progressivism got its political start under the popular president TR.

In order to recover and reclaim the principles of the American Founding, we must recover the language of natural right as well.

Same Old, Same Old

Barack Obama's SOTU last night was less partisan than I thought it was going to be, but nonetheless, it was still full of straw man arguments, half-truths, and out right falsehoods.  Going through all of them would require a few hundred pages, but since I don't have that kind of time, I will focus on just a couple of the more egregious ones.

Here is a good explanation of the stupidity of the continued use of Warren Buffet's secretary as a symbol for raising taxes on the rich (Mr. Buffet's secretary was of course a guest of President Obama last night):

Warren Buffett’s secretary is reportedly sitting in the box with the First Lady tonight. Obviously, President Obama will repeat the utterly false claim that Warren Buffett bears a lower tax burden than his secretary does. If you understand the varying tax treatment of labor and capital income at the corporate level — the former being deductible from taxable income, the latter a part of taxable income — then you understand why Buffett’s claim is false. If you further understand how screwed up the tax calculation on phantom capital gains is, how taxing the principal of an investment already taxes its return, and how America’s corporate income tax came about in the first place (Congress enacted it as a substitute for individual income taxation, after the Supreme Court declared direct income taxes unconstitutional), then you understand that those who defend Buffett’s false claim about the undertaxed wealthy are either ignorant or dishonest.

Tevi Troy on Obama's health care program, regarding which he hardly said a word:

In addition, Obama devoted only 44 words out of 7,000 to his expensive and unpopular health-care law, his so-called signature achievement. He made the claim that “our health-care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program,” which an AP fact check called only “half true.” Even that may have been generous. The law does in fact create a new program, with multiple new government bureaucracies to administer its subsidies, exchanges, and new insurance regulations.

And here is the full NRO symposium on the speech.

Just in closing, I think it's interesting that President Obama barely mentioned Obamacare or the American Recovery Reinvestment Act, his two signature achievements.  He railed against the idea of government bailouts only about thirty minutes after he touted the great job creator that is GM (which got huge amounts of bailout monies).  Again on the energy front, Obama touted that his energy policy would use all available sources of energy:  it would be an all of the above strategy.  But just last week he halted the Keystone XL pipeline.  And what about all the inactivity on the oil rigs on our coasts?

In case you want to read a good speech, here is the one Mitch Daniels gave in response to the SOTU.

The Horrific Logic of Roe

In light of the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, consider this Rueters story:  "Abortion safer than giving birth."

So killing a human being is now safer than giving birth to one.  Interesting...

Strange Days

Here is President Obama on the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which occurred yesterday:

As we mark the 39^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.  I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right.  While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue- no matter what our views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption.  And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

Among the many interesting formulations voiced here is the idea that as President, Obama remains committed to protecting a "fundamental constitutional right"--e.i., the right to abortion.  But he states only a few sentences later that he wishes to "reduce the need for abortion."  Why should a sacred constitutional right be curtailed?  Why should we "reduce" the need for this constitutional right?  What if a federal law was passed by Congress that mandated that people could form mass political demonstrations only on Saturdays with the wish that these demonstrations be "safe, rare, and legal"?  What if the same was said of women in voting booths? 

This is the strange moral abyss in which we find ourselves.

Hypocrisy

With the allegations surrounding Newt regarding his past marriage, I have been noticing more and more the return of a typical argument on the Left concerning the hypocrisy of Republicans.  This argument typically goes something like this:  A Republican is arguing for some "cultural issue" such as gay marriage but is himself having issues in his own marriage.  A Democrat will then come and argue that the hypocrisy by the Republican is disgusting and seems to leave it at that, confident that they have a made an argument from high principles.  The logic of the Democrat seems to indicate that not only is the Republican at fault for his marriage problems, whatever they may be, but that this wrong also somehow invalidates the larger cause the Republican is championing.

This is a strange argument, to say the least and logically, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  How does a wrong committed by the Republican, say, concerning his own marriage, somehow morph into an argument that there is no good reason to oppose gay marriage?  Just because some may not live up to the duties and responsibilities that naturally come with marriage is not an argument against the institution itself.  It makes about as much sense as arguing that because no one has lived a perfectly Christian life that that fact somehow then invalidates all of the teachings of Jesus.

Newt the Inevitable

In the most recent couple of debates, many conservatives have gotten excited over Newt's beat down of liberal journalists and the liberal media in general.  In the most recent debate, moderator John King was taken to task by Newt when he asked him in the opening minutes about the charges brought by his second wife, Marianne.  The argument seems to go something like this:  Oh wow, what an epic beatdown by Newt on the liberal journalists!  Imagine Newt in a debate against Obama!  He would crush him and win the election!

But I think there is something amiss here.  Just because Newt has the rhetorical skills to take down the media and show them for what they are does not necessarily mean he has any of the needed virtues to be a good president.  Attacks like the ones Newt has been increasingly making are red meat for conservatives, but in a debate during the general election, I just can't see how attacks like that would do anything for a moderate (or even a liberal leaning) audience who are not predisposed to agree or even see their relevance in an election about who is best able to lead the country. 

Rich Lowry has a great take on this here:

The thing is if you make a list of the 100 qualities and skills a president needs to succeed, the capacity to administer epic beat-downs of liberal journalists is pretty far down the list. So Newt’s debate triumphs really tell us nothing about his ability to be president, or even his ability to win debates in a general election. Since when has the candidate for president in a general election who shows the most bombast and ill-temper won a debate? Al Gore just sighed and lost a debate.

Natural Rights Should Trump Obamacare

In the December issue of First Things, Hadley Arkes takes some time to map out what should be the main augment against Obamacare: an argument based on natural rights.  Here is the current stage on which we find ourselves:

The legal challenge has merged with the political challenge. For the most serious argument against Obamacare is that it threatens to change the American regime in a grave way: that it sweeps past the constitutional restraints intended to ensure a federal government “limited” in its ends, confined to certain “enumerated” powers, and respecting a domain of local responsibilities that it has no need or rationale for displacing.  

The problem for conservatives is that

...even the jurists they most admire, such as Justice Scalia and the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, have shown their conservatism by their willingness to honor the precedents long settled by their liberal predecessors. And so, only a few years ago, Scalia was willing to invoke again this understanding—long settled among liberal judges—to explain why the federal regulation of controlled substances could not permit people in California to grow marijuana in their own gardens for their own private use.

As Arkes sees it, most, if not all, of the current arguments against Obamacare rest on the idea that even under the most expansive view of the Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence, they have never found that simply because of an individual's existence mandates a general regulation power on behalf of the government.  This argument, however, is wanting.  Here is why:

For all we know, that argument may work. It may persuade five justices on the Supreme Court as it has persuaded some judges in some of the lower courts, and if it does, I for one will be grateful for the result. And yet . . . we need to remind ourselves that this same argument could have been made against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The federal government had penetrated deeply into the ordering and regulation of the private sphere. It told people who were quite unwilling to have commerce with black people that they had to engage with those black people if they wished to stay in business.

The argument is basically one of incredulity:  it is based on bad Supreme Court precedent that we hope will not further evolve when the Court takes up the Obamacare case this spring.

Here is an argument that actually gets to the core: 

How might that case be made then again as a matter of natural right in regard to Obamacare? Not by insisting that we have a natural right not be coerced into buying things we have no wish to buy, but by pointing out that this scheme of national medical care is virtually bound to produce a scheme of rationing, as it has produced that rationing in Britain and Canada, denying medical care to people now entirely reliant on the government for their care. The serious question then is whether this denial to people of the means to preserve their own lives, with means quite legitimate, touches the ground of natural rights.

The hidrerance to making that kind of argument:

There has been no want of examples of conservative judges finding it necessary to move beyond the text of the Constitution in explaining what they think various provisions in the Constitution really mean (as in the right of the people “to keep and bear arms”). But the melancholy point is that the conservative judges have struck for so long now the posture of skepticism over moral reasoning outside the text that they seem to have come full circle in converging with their liberal opposites: They too profess now the most serious doubt that there are real moral truths that reason can discern, truths that can be recognized as true even across the divide that separates liberals and conservatives.

A light to provide the way:

One redeeming path of rescue for the conservatives may have been found, quite without planning, in the recent briefs against Obamacare. The judges in the Eleventh Circuit had the chance to draw on the persuasive brief written by Gregory Katsas, an accomplished young lawyer who directed the late Bush administration’s litigation in its civil cases. His brief was sharp and pointed in many ways, but in one part it drew upon the reasoning I have identified with natural law. He drew upon an argument made by Daniel Webster and John Marshall in 1819 in the famous case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward: Imposing on people a contract they do not want would be quite as wrong as dissolving, without their consent, a contract they had knowingly made.

         [...]

For the judges, and for conservative lawyers looking on, he was playing the game correctly: He finally seemed to find a location in the text of the Constitution for the right he was invoking. But what a detached philosopher would have to point out here is that it wasn’t the Tenth Amendment, or anything else in the text, that was doing the heavy lifting. The Constitution was brought in only after the natural law had been engaged to explain, as only the natural law could, the deep wrongs and rights of the matter.

Please take some time to read the whole thing.

Another PolitiFact 'Epic Fail'

Tom Bruscino, assistant professor of History at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, was recently contacted by Louis Jacobson about a story he was working on for PolitiFact.  The story concerned Mitt Romney's assertion that the U.S. Navy is the smallest it has been since 1917 and that the Air Force is smaller and older than any time since 1947.  In a long and thoughtful response, Bruscino responded to Jacobson's query and found that it appeared that the statistic Mitt used "is accurate personnel-wise."  Bruscino concluded that although the statistics and the context can get complicated, he nonetheless found that Romney's "overall statement appears to be accurate about the trend--the Air Force is older and smaller than it has been for almost its entire history."

When the article was published, Bruscino was surprised to learn that Jacobson rated Romney's statements as "Pants on Fire" because of the supposedly misleading context.  Here is more of Bruscino's reaction:

Jacobson did a remarkable bit of research in a very short period of time. However, I did think his questions to me were leading. Remember, Mr. Jacobson asked "(2) What context does this ignore (changing/more lethal technology, changed geopolitical needs, etc)?," which both assumes and implies to the interviewees that Romney ignored those specific contexts.

Additionally, in his final few paragraphs, Jacobson refers to Romney's statements as "meaningless," "glib," "preposterous," and "ridiculous." To be frank, I'm a little surprised by that wording, especially in writing for a site that strives for objectivity.

My opinion, for what it is worth, is that since Romney's base statement was factually accurate when it came to most numerical metrics, it would seem that he could be given credit for a half-truth, even if the context complicates the matter.

In any event, that is how PolitiFact worked in this case. Just in case you are interested. 

The article was so egregious that even Politico condemned it this morning in their "Morning Defense" email:

EPIC FAIL - It’s PolitiFact that deserves the “Pants on Fire” for incomplete reporting, because Romney was just repeating a point Navy leaders themselves have made numerous times over the past year. Here’s Mabus, speaking last April at the Navy League’s annual meeting: “One of our main areas of focus has to be the size of our fleet. The CNO has repeatedly said, and I repeatedly have strongly supported him, that the minimal number of ships we should have is 313. We have 288 today in the battle fleet: the lowest number since 1916, which – during that time, the intervening years, our responsibilities have grown somewhat. But if Congress funds the shipbuilding program that we have laid out, we will reach a fleet of 325 ships in the early 2020s.”

This is just one example in the long train of abuses by PolitiFact.

Media Indiscretions

Newt Gingich's second wife Marianne has revealed in an interview scheduled to be aired tonight on ABC that Gingrich asked her for an open marriage so that he could continue an affair with his now third wife, Callista.

My take on it is that we really do not have enough information to determine if this is true or not.  Knowing Gingrich's past marriage problems, it does seem more likely but simply relying on a hunch is not enough to condemn Gingrich for the actions for which he is accused.  Knowing the media's selective reporting on stories like this also brings an interesting twist to the story. On top of that, the same people screaming that what one does in the privacy of one's home (or in the case of Bill Clinton, the White House) doesn't matter are now going to be mostly the same group of people wanting to publicly skewer Newt for his accused actions.   

The AP reported that the controversy at ABC revolved around whether or not they would air the interview, and I am sure much gnashing of teeth and many tears were spilled during this "civil war" that had reportedly been going on for some time.  In their obvious worry about not wanting to unduly influence the current Republican race, they decided to air the interview only a few days before the South Carolina primary, right when Gingrich would be gaining in popularity because of his strong base of support there (also, Rick Perry bowing out of the race definitely helps as well).

At The American Spectator, Jeffrey Lord recalls that back when the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal surfaced, Newsweek tried to keep the story under wraps.  Lord continues with a story about the controversy that involved Don Imus (no, not that one) and the sexual indiscretions of Peter Jennings:
 

What will not be mentioned tonight in the report on Gingrich's private life? This bit from Imus in that 1996 [White House Correspondents Dinner] speech:

And then there's Peter Jennings, who we are told more Americans get their news from than anyone else -- and a man who freely admits that he cannot resist women. So I'm thinking, here's Peter Jennings sitting there each evening, elegant, erudite, refined. And I'm thinking, what's under his desk? I mean , besides an intern. (groans) The first place the telecommunications bill should have mandated that a v-chip be placed is in Mr. Jennings shorts. (groans)….

By the way, and this is really awful, (laughter) if you're Peter Jennings and you're telling more Americans than anyone else what's going on in the world, shouldn't you at least have had a clue that your wife was over at Richard Cohen's house? (laughter, groans, boos) She wasn't at my house!

Notice the text transcript includes the editorial note of "groans" and "boos." Why was this? This was a dinner of mainstream media journalists. It was OK for them to decide whose private life to poke into -- but certainly nowhere on the list did that include one of their own, which Peter Jennings very much was. The irreverent I-Man took time in his speech to mock the-then very much alive ABC News anchor Mr. Jennings for -- his private life. It was a huge social no-no. In spite of the fact that the Jennings reputation in the day, off-camera and certainly never discussed much less reported about on camera anywhere, was that the then three-times married anchor was your basic womanizer. In fact, Jennings was in 1996 already divorced from wife number three and the very next year would marry a fourth time. The Imus reference to an intern under Jennings' desk while he was reporting the news on camera was in reference to a gossipy tidbit that had long circulated about Jennings on-air conduct yet mysteriously was never the subject of an investigative report by ABC's Brian Ross. Powerful public figure boss with an intern under the desk? Can you imagine if, say, the public man at the time had been then-Speaker Newt Gingrich?  But it was Jennings, not Gingrich…so…the I-man had crossed a line.

Notice also the next item the I-Man joked about. Again, this reference involved something that was never investigated by ABC News. To wit, as Wikipedia delicately phrases it now:

On August 13, 1993, Jennings and Kati Marton publicly announced their separation in Newsday. The couple had previously split in 1987 for four months after Jennings found out that Marton was having an affair with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.

In other words, what the I-Man said that was deeply inappropriate to the mainstream media in the room that night was to joke out loud and on camera to the country about the insider gossip of the day that Jennings's third wife had once left Jennings for, again in the words of Wikipedia, "an affair with Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen."

For this offense of saying these things about the private life of ABC News anchor Jennings, Don Imus received a torrent of media criticism. Notably, a then-frequent guest on his radio show was ABC reporter Cokie Roberts. Ms. Roberts was so appalled and angered by this public discussion of Jennings' private life that she quite publicly and hotly vowed she would "never" appear on the Imus show again.

I never knew this about Jennings but it is interesting nonetheless. 

The problem as highlighted by Lord isn't about wanting to keep conservatives' indiscretions a secret and only highlight liberal promiscuity.  It's about equal treatment of anyone, regardless of the position of power they hold. 

Keystone Cop

I am sure that you heard by now that the Obama Administration has rejected the permit application for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.  It is estimated that

[b]uilding the pipeline would bring over 700,000 barrels of oil per day and directly create 20,000 truly shovel-ready jobs. The Canadian Energy Research Institute estimates that current pipeline operations and the addition of the Keystone XL pipeline would create 179,000 American jobs by 2035.

The good news is that the pipeline will eventually be constructed.  It's just a matter now of how to reroute it through Nebraska.

President Obama issued this statement on his decision which included the following:

This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people.  I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my Administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.

Hmmm.  Arbitrary deadlines? It's true that Republicans did include a 60 day deadline in the payroll tax holiday legislation that was recently passed by both the House and (Democrat-controlled) Senate.  They were tired of the games, and they wanted the president to finally make a decision after he had been wanting to punt it until sometime after the 2012 election. 

And also, what about three year study that has already been completed by the Department of State regarding the pipeline?  Here is more on that study, which began when TransCanada, the corporation that will be building the pipeline, submitted their paperwork back in 2008:

DOS studied and addressed risk to soil, wetlands, water resources, vegetation, fish, wildlife, and endangered species. They concluded that the construction of the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk. Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by DOS and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). The pipeline would be equipped with 16,000 sensors connected to satellite that would monitor the pressure of the pipeline.

So, it's not even about shovel ready jobs.  It's not about saving the environment from those evil pollution-loving Republicans.  It's all about the one job in the White House.

Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver

Rick Santorum was recently asked by a voter in South Carolina about his views of the Constitution as opposed to those of Rep. Ron Paul.  Here is his answer:

Ron Paul has a libertarian view of the Constitution. I do not. The Constitution has to be read in the context of another founding document, and that’s the Declaration of Independence. Our country never was a libertarian idea of radical individualism. We have certain values and principles that are embodied in our country. We have God-given rights. 

The Constitution is not the “why” of America; it’s the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. It’s the rules we have to play by to ensure something. And what do we ensure? God-given rights. And so to read the Constitution as the end-all, be-all is, in a sense, what happened in France. You see, during the time of our revolution, we had a Declaration of Independence that said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [that they are] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

So we were founded as a country that had God-given rights that the government had to respect. And with those rights come responsibilities, right? God did not just give us rights. He gave us a moral code by which to exercise them. 

See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leaves out. He leaves out rights and responsibilities that we have from God that this Constitution is to protect. And he says, “No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.” No, we don’t. America is a moral enterprise….

My understanding of our founding documents and the purpose of this country is different. I would argue that [Paul’s] understanding of the Constitution was similar to the French Revolution and the French understanding of the Constitution. The French had 21, I think, constitutions, but their constitutions were initially patterned after the American Constitution. Gave radical freedom, like ours does. But their founding document was not the Declaration of Independence. Their founding watchwords were the words, “liberty” and “fraternity.” Fraternity. Brotherhood. But no fatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clerical revolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules.

This is exactly how all the candidates need to talk this election season.  Bravo, Rick.

An Argument Worth Refuting

Yet again in the debate last night, Ron Paul parroted a standard argument of the Left and asserted that racism on a wide scale still exists in the U.S.  He argued that it is evident in the disproportional number of blacks in prison and who are executed.  Dennis Prager has an answer to Paul:

The claim that America disproportionately executes blacks is a falsehood, disseminated on virtually every left-wing website, from the ACLU’s to all the anti-death-penalty sites. The only way it can be regarded as true is if the disproportion is in relation to the entire population of the country: Blacks make up about 12 percent of the population, and since 1976 about 35 percent of those executed for murder have been black. But this is a statistic that tells no truth because it is meaningless in terms of determining alleged racial bias.

This is very easy to prove. Males make up about 50 percent of the American population but about 99 percent of those executed. Is the American justice system wildly anti-male?

Of course not. The statistic that matters in assessing bias in executions is the proportion of murderers of a given group that is executed, not the group’s proportion of the entire population.

And, here, it is clear that blacks are actually underrepresented in executions.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty organization, between 1976 and January 2012, 441 blacks (35 percent of the total of convicted murderers) and 717 whites (55 percent of the total) were executed. Given that blacks committed more than half the murders during that time (52 percent vs. 46 percent by whites), if we are to assess racial bias based on proportionality of murderers executed, the system is biased against whites, not blacks.

It's truly a ridiculous claim that is so simplistic, it makes one wonder if Paul really knows the truth and is simply trying to court a certain voting bloc.  For someone who has devoted many years to studying the complexities of Austrian economics, it really makes you wonder...

Why is Newsweek Still Around?

Below is the front cover of the upcoming edition of Newsweek:

John Hinderaker has some thoughts on the general "stupidity" of Obama's critics:

Well, sure. We who are unhappy that unemployment has increased on Obama’s watch, that over-regulation has stymied economic growth, that our children now owe a $15 trillion debt that we can’t pay–hey, we’re just dumb! We obviously aren’t smart enough to understand how devastating our economy, unemploying millions of Americans and burdening our children with trillions of dollars in debt is really a great idea.

It's amazing to think that Newsweek still has subscribers.

The Only Constitutionalist

I was reading this piece by Rob Long about Ron Paul on NRO and came to the last paragraph:

Whatever the reason for the weird ramblings in the Ron Paul family of publications — and to me, anyway, the most likely one is: the guy wanted to move some product, and his customers ate that crap up — it does suggest a sad conclusion: that the job of the constitutional candidate — the ombudsman for the founding document, the champion of the framers — is unlikely to appeal to anyone except the humorless crank at the end of the bar. And that’s not Ron Paul’s fault. That’s ours.

I agree with Rob about the Paul newsletter fiasco, but this last bit is kind of a head-scratcher.  Just because a candidate constantly refers to the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that that candidate has a good, principled understanding of the Constitution whatsoever.  Contra Rob, with the rise of the Tea Parties and the majority of Americans thirsting for the exposition of the principles of the American Founding, I think America is as open as ever to having candidates talk about the Constitution in serious, principled discussions.  But when Paul talks about it, he doesn't do much educating.  (In fact, why after 30 years in Congress has he not really been able to sway many people in Washington to his understanding?)  He always talks about the Constitution in vague, almost throw-a-way terms, and overall, I get the impression more and more that his fidelity to the "Constitution" is simply his fidelity to his brand of libertarianism.   And just an aside:  If voters look at Ron Paul and view him as what a candidate is supposed to be like if he follows the Constitution, wouldn't you think that might turn people off from actually following it in the first place? 

On MLK's Principles

Today marks the anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., a man who is rightly praised today but the reasons for that praise may be less than perfectly understood.  In a era when Civil Rights leaders rejected the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as racist, King's teachings drew us back to those principles and taught us that far from rejecting those principles, we needed to rise up and live up to those principles.  King' teachings revolved around reason and revelation, or Nature and Nature's God.  Here is King in his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail on justice, or what Madison said was the end of any legitimate government:

How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.

And here is King in his famous "I Have A Dream" speech:

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

For King, as it was for the Founders and Lincoln, the Declaration of Independence set the principle of equality as the cornerstone of our regime.  King saw that the principles of the Declaration were in line with the natural law and that following those principles would lead to a just cause to a just conclusion.  Because we as a nation at that time and even today, albeit in a more benign way, still have yet to live up to those principles in no way invalidates the justness of those natural law principles themselves.  But to end here would not tell the full picture.

William F. Buckley on the Rev. King's adherence above all to following the precepts of Christianity and the teachings of the Bible:   

We read the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., whose life we celebrate while tending to ignore the essence of his ideals, the ideals acclaimed by him, as by Abraham Lincoln, as the ground of his idealism. A bizarre paradox in the new secular order is the celebration of Dr. King’s birthday, a national holiday acclaimed as the heartbeat of articulated idealism in race relations, conscientiously observed in our schools, with, however, scant thought given to Dr. King’s own faith. What is largely overlooked, in the matter of Dr. King, is his Christian training and explicitly Christian commitment. Every student is familiar with the incantation, “I have a dream.” Not many are familiar with the peroration. The closing words were, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” The sermon Martin Luther King preached at the Ebenezer Baptist Church three months before he was killed was selected by his votaries as the words to be replayed at his funeral. It closed, “If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, then my living will not be in vain.” George Washington would not have been surprised by Dr. King’s formulation. Washington admonished against any “supposition” that “morality can be maintained without religion.” “Reason and experience,’’ he commented, “both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Two centuries before the advent of Dr. King, George Washington wrote with poetic force a letter to the Hebrew congregation of Savannah on the divine auspices of intercreedal toleration. “May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors … continue to water them with the dews of heaven and make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.”

We should keep this in mind when we honor MLK's legacy.

How Meaningless is This?

This Yahoo! news story details the estimates of each of the Republican candidates' net-worth (President Obama falls right in the middle).  The article is titled "Election 2012:  How rich are these guys?"  Obviously, the greater the net worth, the greater the amount of evil perpetrated.

Romney's Central Problem

Andy McCarthy's weekend column on the main problem conservatives face if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee (which all indications say now that he most likely will be) is a must read.  Of course, the central problem with Romney centers around his continued defense of Romneycare.  Here is McCarthy:

Obamacare is the issue that inspires the conservative base. Republicans simply must have the base’s enthusiastic support if they are to beat a lavishly funded incumbent who will pull no punches, none, in striving to keep his job. There is no serious person who doubts that Romneycare was the building block for Obamacare: The experts who helped design the former were consulted in the creation of the latter. Yet Romney continues to insist that Romneycare is a smashing success, one he suggests he’d do again without hesitation. 

McCarthy hits the nail on the head in his states' rights  federalism argument:

First there’s the Tenth Amendment business. Being a Tenth Amendment kind of guy, I’m predisposed toward different-strokes-for-different-states arguments: What’s right for Massachusetts may not be right for Mississippi or Montana. 

Nevertheless, some things are wrong everywhere. One such thing is a massive government infiltration into the private economy, one that coerces the purchase of a commodity (health insurance) as a condition of living in the state. For one thing, such an exercise in steroid statism establishes a rationale in law for government intrusion into every aspect of private life: If health care is deemed a corporate asset, then “bad” behavioral choices must be regulated, lest someone get more than his share. Romney portrayed Romneycare as a model, at least for other states, if not for the nation. But no free-market, limited-government conservative thinks this officious onslaught is a model to be emulated anyplace.

Far too many conservatives think that some vague references to the 10th Amendment make Romneycare acceptable under the Constitution.  But what about the principles the Constitution itself is built upon?  Would slavery or man-child relationships be right if a majority in a state voted for those atrocities?  Would the federal government not be able to right those wrongs?  As McCarthy rightly understands, there are some things that are wrong in principle everywhere, no matter if it is the policy of the federal government or confined completely within one state.  This was the argument of the Founders, Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, and every other clear-thinking American.

The main problem with the Romney nomination is this:  at a time when we need someone to make the case in principle against schemes like Obamacare and Romneycare that inflict injuries upon the natural rights of the people (and at a time when the public is increasingly open to these kinds of arguments), Romney will only be making the case on a contingent basis (that is, only against Obamacare) instead of on the level of principle.  This is a shame.

New Year's Political Resolutions

Over at No Left Turns, Ken Thomas points to these New Year's Resolutions--ones primarily for conservatives but also for anyone willing to take the principles of the U.S. seriously--and finds a sure guide for anyone interested in following a more principled politics in the new year.  A couple that are very worth mentioning: 

States don’t have rights. People do.

States have powers. Nowhere in the Constitution are states said to possess rights. Congress has certain powers, clearly enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, and the conservative-favorite Tenth Amendment makes clear that all the other powers are reserved to the states.

Not only is it incorrect to speak of states’ rights, but the expression has more baggage than Samsonite and Louis Vuitton combined. In case you didn’t know, “states’ rights” was the rallying cry of segregationists. Since no right-thinking conservative will keep company with such people, let’s just drop the term states’ rights once and for all.

And one that too many conservatives and Tea Partiers fall for:

...please don’t start talking about nullification as the magical silver bullet that other conservatives somehow overlooked in their efforts to repeal Obamacare (or any other unconstitutional law, for that matter).

Nullification is blatantly unconstitutional. As James Madison pointed out in 1798, 1800 and again during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, individual states do not have the power to unilaterally declare federal legislation unconstitutional. They have the power–in fact, the duty–to challenge laws they deem objectionable, but this must be done within the existing constitutional framework. Let us behold a republican remedy, as Madison would say, to this federal overreach.

For more on the dangers of nullification, see this essay.

Firing Line

In response to the attacks coming from both conservatives (aka Perry and Gingrich) and liberals that Mitt Romney "likes to fire people", Anne Coulter (and Romney supporter) take a look at what he really said and what it really means.  Here is Anne:

Romney’s statement about being able to fire people was an arrow directed straight to the heart of Obamacare. (By the way, arrows to the heart are not covered by Obamacare.)

Talking about insurance providers, he said:

I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.

So the actual context of Romney's statement was an argument against Obamacare, not a statement directed towards the people who worked under him at Bain Capital. I wonder why that little point has not been focused on by the media...

And some parting words of wisdom:

(And a tip for you Washington types: Just because a person became rich without working for government doesn’t mean he is “Wall Street.” A venture capital firm in Boston that tries to rescue businesses headed for bankruptcy, for example, is not “Wall Street.”)

A Victory For Religious Liberty

In a unanimous ruling yesterday in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC, the Supreme Court held that the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment bar religious ministers from "invoking the employment-discrimination laws against the religious organizations that employ them." Ed Whelan at Bench Memos has more:

Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion on behalf of the entire Court affirms that the so-called “ministerial exception” to employment-discrimination laws is firmly rooted in the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses, including the Court’s decisions establishing that “it is impermissible for the government to contradict a church’s determination of who can act as its ministers.” The opinion thus rejects the remarkably hostile contentions of the Obama administration that there is no general ministerial exception and that religious organizations are limited to the right to freedom of association that labor unions and social clubs enjoy. That latter contention, the Chief explains,

So, just to make clear:  the case by the Obama Justice Department was rejected by all nine justices.

On the concurrent opinions:

In one concurring opinion, Justice Thomas expresses his view that courts should “defer to a religious organization’s good-faith understanding of who qualifies as a minister.” In a second concurrence, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, calls for the inquiry to “focus on the function performed by persons who work for religious bodies,” rather than on whether a religious organization uses the term “minister” or has a concept of ordination.

Douglas Laycock who represented Hosana-Tabor, has an editorial at CNN.com here.

Lastly, Richard Garnett, Professor of Law at Notre Dame, has a rebuttal to the obvious counter-argument to the unanimous ruling of the Court:  that is, churches are now above the law and will be able to do anything they want if they simply couch it in theological terms.  Here is his answer:

Obviously, churches are not “above the law,” and sometimes they — like all of us — behave badly. However, governments are not permitted to resolve essentially religious disputes and questions. Today’s decision is a resounding win for religious liberty in America. It will be welcomed by a wide range of religious communities and traditions, and it should be embraced across the political spectrum. It is true that there are those for whom the idea that some relationships and questions are beyond the reach of the government’s anti-discrimination efforts is incomprehensible. But these objectors are mistaken. In a free society, governments are competent and powerful, but also limited, and they respect the rights and freedoms of other, non-state authorities and communities.

Words As Fundamental

In a post on the NRO blog, Jay Nordlinger has some very interesting history lessons on what we all basically take for granted when we use certain words in the political lexicon.  Here is Jay:

“Fascist” used to mean something — and it still does, to serious people (who are so few). I’ll quote a dictionary definition of fascism: “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.”

After the war (World War II), the Left seized the word “fascist” and applied it to people who were the opposite of fascist: who favored democracy, pluralism, individual freedom, the rule of law, property rights, the separation of powers, free enterprise, etc. I, for example (who am a classical liberal, like you, probably), am called a fascist all the time. Martin Luther King, in his Nobel lecture, called Barry Goldwater a fascist — Barry Goldwater, who was a decentralizer, not a centralizer, if there ever was one.

“Liberal” used to mean something too, and that meaning was a far cry from “McGovernite.” Liberals were distrustful of state power, wanting to curb it. They emphasized individual freedoms. They pressed for free trade. They were opponents of collectivism, in its many manifestations. They prized freedom of conscience. But the Left seized the word “liberal” too — and before you knew it, the New York Times was referring to Angela Davis as “ultra-liberal.”

Davis, remember, was the vice-presidential nominee of the Communist party.

In some parts of the world, they continue to use “liberal” in the old way. This confuses some Americans. Our media had a ticklish time with John Howard — the “right-wing,” “warmongering,” Bush-supporting prime minister of Australia, who was leader of the Liberal party. In Europe, the Left denounces Reagan-style people as “neo-liberals” or “hyper-liberals” — which would make someone like Barbra Streisand dizzy.

“Neocon” used to mean something, something fairly solid. Michael Harrington applied it to Irving Kristol. The neoconservatives were people who had crossed over from the left side of our spectrum for two reasons, essentially: They were skeptical of the efficacy of social-welfare programs, and they wanted to stand up to the Soviet Union in the manner of John Kennedy and previous Democrats. In time, however, “neocon” came to mean — well, what “fascist” means. It means, “I know you’re not on the left, and I hate you.”

The deconstruction of the words discussed by Nordlinger--and there is a mountain where that came from--tells us a lot about the degraded form of politics that we practice and the people that we have become.  For that reason, it is all the more important to read the Great Books and the Founding documents so that we re-familiarize ourselves with what we have lost or rejected without even knowing it.  Education in Great Books, however, does obscure things a bit because a book written two hundred years ago doesn't on its face make it automatically better than books written today.  The reason that kind of education is needed is because it makes us aware again of what most those authors back then (before the ravages of modern education and value-free language) took for granted and what the authors today may miss:  a permanent human nature in a world of permanent, unchanging truths that are discoverable equally through reason and revelation. 

Romney's Bain

Over the weekend the following statements were said in regards to Mitt Romney's tenure at the venture capital firm, Bain Capital:

“Now, I have no doubt Mitt Romney was worried about pink slips — whether he was going to have enough of them to hand out because his company, Bain Capital, of all the jobs that they killed.”

“If you are a victim of Bain capital’s downsizing, it’s the ultimate insult for Mitt Romney to come to South Carolina and tell you he feels your pain — because he caused it.” 

“We want everyday normal people to run for office...[n]ot just millionaires.”

Think this came from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or David Axelrod?  No, this came from Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich.  You would expect to hear that kind of language from Democrats.

Here is Rush today:

I don't understand why the Occupy Wall Street crowd is protesting Newt. They're singing from the same hymnal on this. This is right out of the New York Times. Newt is parroting what the New York Times is writing about Romney on this: Six rich guys taking over...Folks, it is clear here (to me, anyway) what's really going on. This is not a campaign for the presidency. That's not what this is anymore. This is payback time. This is Newt. It drove him nuts that series of ads the Romney super PAC ran against him in Iowa, and this is the result of it. That's why we are where we are. (interruption) No, no. I'm not making excuses, don't misunderstand. I'm just explaining. I'm not defending anybody. I just think this is very unfortunate. This is... (sigh) This is not the kind of stuff you want said by Republicans. I mean, even the establishment Republicans don't go after conservatives this way.

Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard has a very good and measured take on this whole thing here:

Post 2008, capitalism needs its strong defenders—but its defenders need also to be its constructive critics. The Tea Party was right. What's needed is a critique of Big Government above all, but also of Big Business and Big Finance and Big Labor (and Big Education and Big Media and all the rest)—and especially a critique of all those occasions when one or more of these institutions conspire against the common good. What's needed is a willingness to put Main Street (at least slightly) ahead of Wall Street, and a reform agenda for capitalism that strengthens it, alongside an even more dramatic reform agenda for government that limits it. 

Bain Capital shouldn’t be demonized. It may not even deserve to be criticized. But in laying out a way forward, conservatives might remember that Bain Capital isn’t capitalism, that capitalism by itself isn’t freedom, and that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the Gospel of Wealth.

Capitalism must be veiwed within the moral universe that the Founders took for granted in creating this country.  It is not a wholesale theory that explains everything.  Without moral knowledge and ethics, it can lead to disastrous consequences.

This is very important:

On the other [hand], Mitt Romney’s claim throughout his campaign that his private sector experience almost uniquely qualifies him to be president is also silly. Does he really think that having done well in private equity, venture capital, and business consulting—or even in the private sector more broadly—is a self-evident qualification for public office? One assumes Mitt Romney would agree that Chris Christie is a better chief executive of New Jersey than Jon Corzine, and that Rudy Giuliani was a better mayor of New York than Mike Bloomberg. But Romney’s biography looks a lot more like Bloomberg's or Corzine's (leaving aside Corzine's recent misadventures) than like that of Giuliani (pre-mayoralty) or Christie. Past business success does not guarantee performance in public office. Indeed, Romney sometimes seems to go so far as to suggest that succeeding in the private sector is intrinsically more admirable than, e.g., serving as a teacher or a soldier or even in Congress. This is not a sensible proposition, or a defensible one.   

Thoughts on the Debate Last Night

I have to commend the political commentators for devoting two hours to yet another debate last night (I primarily watched the Saints and Lions game).  It was an important debate for Rick Santorum as this was the first debate since his surprising second place finish in the Iowa Caucuses.  Santorum did seem to have a good night (probably because he no longer had to complain in every answer about the lack of attention by the questioners), but I wonder if he will be able to persuade anyone that he is a more viable candidate than Mitt Romney.  If he wants to beat Romney, he will have to finally hit him where it hurts and attack him on Romneycare and argue how it is against the natural law principles of the Constitution.  Because of his strong, principled pro-life stand, I have more faith in Santorum than anyone else in being able to marshal the strongest possible arguments against Romneycare.

Other highlights:  Rick Perry was finally able to remember that pesky third agency he wants to eliminate.  I think if Perry would have done this well from the beginning, he might have had a reasonable chance at the nomination.  Jon Huntsman finally got the opportunity to speak Mandarin.  Ron Paul questioned Newt Gingrich's military service, which got Gingrich fired up.  The ABC questioners--George Stephanopoulos, Diane Sawyer, and some local anchor--obviously thought that the economy was sound and of no major concern since the first quarter of the debate was focused on whether or not the candidates thought states could outlaw contraception.  Newt got in a brilliant point about how religious organizations that are against having homosexual couples adopt children are now being barred from offering adoptions and no one seems to shed a tear for them (or for the children who would go unadopted).  Stephanopoulos finally asked Ron Paul about the newsletters, and Paul, obviously miffed about the question, denied all knowledge and instead, talked about the racist nature of drug laws.

Here and here are some good takes on the debate.  Also, since the questioners did bring up the right to privacy that the Supreme Court found in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitution in the Griswold decision, I will leave it to Hadley Arkes to answer:

George Stephanopoulos tried to set a trap for Rick Santorum by asking Romney whether states have the constitutional authority to ban contraception. Romney thought the question odd because no state, he said, has shown an interest in doing that. But of course they haven’t shown an interest in doing that, because the Supreme Court began to bar that kind of restriction in 1965 with the famous case of Griswold v. Connecticut.

Stephanopoulos was about to display his knowledge of constitutional law by recalling that the Supreme Court had found a right to privacy in the Constitution, a right that covered contraception. But Stephanopoulos did not know much beyond that slogan. The Court in that case emphasized a right of contraception for married couples. The liberal justice Byron White concurred, but he left open the possibility that the state could plausibly bar contraception as part of a policy to discourage “promiscuous or illicit sexual relationship[s], be they premarital or extramarital.” It may still be an open question whether a state may act to bar the sale of contraceptives to adolescents. And in dramatic contrast, there has been much talk of late of having local governments mandate the use of contraceptives for actors appearing in pornographic films or men having sex with strangers in bathhouses and clubs. The magic word “privacy” has not put contraception beyond the reach of the law and regulation. Rick Santorum has many good comebacks here, which he should master if the question comes back again. And it’s likely to come back, precisely because the Diane Sawyers and George Stephanopouloses know their constitutional law as something just short of messages read in fortune cookies.

Newt Gingrich's Ideas

This twitter feed is ridiculously funny:  Newt Gingrich Ideas (h/t Blue Yeti).

Here are just a few:

Wait, I Thought Obama Didn't Have A Primary Opponent...

In case you forgot that Jon Huntsman was still running for president, here is a reminder:  in a somewhat surprising move, the Boston Globe came out yesterday and endorsed Huntsman for the Republican nomination for president.  Here are a couple of the Globe's reasons for their endorsement:

He has stood up far more forcefully than Romney against those in his party who reject evolution and the science behind global warming...

When the national economy fell into recession, some Republican governors made a show of rejecting federal stimulus money on ideological grounds; sensibly, Huntsman took the money... 

In the eyes of Democrats, Huntsman is what a Republican is supposed to be like.

(h/t to Troy Senick)

Big Government vs. Limited Government

Michael Tanner, a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, questions Rick Santorum's conservative credentials and thinks Santorum is just the next in a long line of big government conservatives.  Here is Tanner:

Santorum’s voting record shows that he embraced George Bush–style “big-government conservatism.” For example, he supported the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. 

He never met an earmark that he didn’t like. In fact, it wasn’t just earmarks for his own state that he favored, which might be forgiven as pure electoral pragmatism, but earmarks for everyone, including the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere.” The quintessential Washington insider, he worked closely with Tom DeLay to set up the “K Street Project,” linking lobbyists with the GOP leadership.

He voted against NAFTA and has long opposed free trade. He backed higher tariffs on everything from steel to honey. He still supports an industrial policy with the government tilting the playing field toward manufacturing industries and picking winners and losers.

I am not actually going to rebut any of the points Tanner brings up because while some may be true, others are described in a vacuum without any type of context or education on the issues (even the most conservative member of the Senate, Jim DeMint has voted for earmarks, and so has the fiscal hawk Rep. Ron Paul).  I am more focused on the language of describing a government that has breached its constitutional bounds as "big government."  The obvious implication is that a constitutional government is "small government."  The Founders would disagree.

Here is Charles Kesler from a great essay published a few years ago in Imprimis:

Proposition one: Limited government can be distinguished from small government. The two concepts are easily confused because they usually overlap...My second proposition is that limited government can enhance our freedom—even though it costs money. Were Americans in 1944 somehow less free than if we had not spent so copiously to stop Hitler and to liberate Western Europe? Or, to change the analogy, does government spending on courts and prisons diminish our liberty?

          ...

This leads to proposition three: Limited government can be compatible with energetic government. That is, limited government doesn't mean government that does as little as possible. To fight terrorists, or even to arrest and prosecute criminals, requires an energetic government, especially in the executive branch. While our Founders were not uninterested in the question of the sum of power granted to the federal government, they were more interested in the kinds and distribution of powers that would be confirmed by the Constitution. They moved the debate from power (singular) to powers (plural); hence their profound thoughts on the separation of powers. Separation was meant both to prevent the worst and to enable the best kind of government. It was designed to prevent tyranny by not allowing one or more branches to escape the law or to encroach on the other branches. But it was also designed to allow each branch to perform its duty well—to keep the judicial power judicious, the legislative power deliberative, and the executive power energetic. So long as the objects or purposes of the federal government were kept to a few great ends—for example, diplomacy, national defense, regulating interstate commerce—the means to those ends could be construed more or less liberally and safely.

Accordingly, my fourth proposition is that limited government must be constitutional government. Government must be limited to its proper ends, but its means must be capable of effecting those ends. To resolve these goals was the great achievement of the political science of the Founding Fathers, whose emblem was the Constitution; or to be more precise, the Constitution as seen in the light of the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Political battles during the Founding era revolved around the best way to effectuate the ends of government, which were spelled out in the Constitution.  The Founders disagreed mainly over how energetic government should be in effectuating those ends.  The battles now are of a completely different nature, because neither major party agrees on the ends of government never mind the means to achieving those ends.

Although they have done better recently, conservatives need to be mindful of talking about a limited or constitutional government instead of focusing on adjective like "small" which, like the President's favorite adjective, "change" is completely a product of modern value-free social science.  There can be a small government that is a tyranny just as there can be a government of a larger size that can be just.  We just need to be mindful of the language we use and how it can help shape our politics and ultimately, ourselves.

The Myth of Judicial Supremacy

In light of Newt Gingrich's recent statements against the much-too-accepted idea of judicial supremacy, Harvard Law student Joel Alicea takes some time to delve into these matters.  In an excellent essay, Alicea finds that those who oppose the myth of judicial supremacy are following in the footsteps of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.  Here is Alicea on some very important background details on Cooper v. Aaron, the case where the Supreme Court conflated judicial supremacy with their constitutional duties arising out of the judicial power:

Cooper v. Aaron came to the Supreme Court under extraordinary circumstances, the drama of which is matched by few instances in our constitutional history. On the day before black students were to be admitted to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in compliance with the local school board’s desegregation plan and the Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the state national guard to surround the building and declare it “off limits” to blacks. The governor’s actions precipitated a national crisis. President Eisenhower ordered in the Army to ensure desegregation moved forward. Months later, still in the midst of the crisis and at the request of the Little Rock School Board, the federal district court overseeing desegregation in Little Rock halted implementation of Brown, reasoning that more time was needed before desegregation could proceed.

Of course Gov. Faubus was wrong, but in countering his misdeeds, the Court, rightly seeing the dangers of Faubus's actions, greatly overreached in their attempt to quash the attempt at state nullification (a doctrine which far too many Tea Partiers and conservatives seem to think follows from the Founders principles).

Here is the Court's principal error: 

The scope of the Court’s statement was not tailored to its end. Cooper was a case about enforcing federal law against the states. The Court need only have claimed the power to bind the states to its decisions; there was no need for the Court to assert its supremacy in constitutional interpretation against Congress and the president. The second sentence of the Court’s opinion makes it clear that the case “involve[d] a claim by the Governor and Legislature of a State that there [was] no duty on state officials to obey federal court orders resting on this Court’s considered interpretation of the Constitution.” Moreover, the Court’s statement was wholly superfluous to the legal issue in the case. Its rejection of Governor Faubus’s intimidation tactics sufficed to require desegregation to go forward. But the Court chose to assert a far more sweeping power: the final word on the meaning of the Constitution for all levels of government.

And finally the battle lines are draw between Lincoln and Cheif Justice Roger Taney, the man behind the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott case:

The real question is not whether opponents of the Court’s assertion of judicial supremacy in Cooper applaud the outcome of the case; it is whether supporters of judicial supremacy understand that their position places them on the other side of Abraham Lincoln. It was Lincoln who, in response to Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, rejected judicial supremacy in his first inaugural address. Lincoln believed that accepting judicial supremacy would mean that “the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.” He followed through on his challenge to the Court by defying the Dred Scott decision and issuing passports to free black citizens. How odd that those who follow in the tradition of Lincoln should find themselves accused of the sins of Taney.

But of course in the eyes of the New York Times, the arguments of conservatives against judicial supremacy amount only to little more than covert racism.