Logic of a Liberal

Here is MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell on job creation and the government:

I don't think there have ever been more errors compounded into a shorter amount of time.

(Thanks to Jonah Goldberg.)

Zero Percent

A story that blew up online yesterday concerned a supposed one percent tip left by a wealthy banker in California.  An employee of the banker supposedly captured the tip on his phone and posted it on a blog, which was quickly taken down due to high traffic volume.  Here is what the employee wrote about his boss, the banker:

“Mention the ’99 percent’ in my boss’ presence and feel his wrath. So proudly does he wear his 1 percent badge of honor that he tips exactly 1 percent every time he feels the server doesn’t sufficiently bow down to his Holiness. Oh, and he always makes sure to include a ‘tip’ of his own.”

Of course this played right into the 1% vs. the 99% illusion brought on by Occupy Wall Street and perpetuated by the media.  Stories detailing the one percent tip overflowed with bromides about the "growing income gap" and some sites paired the story with an ABC article titled "Are Rich People Unethical?" 

But it was all a hoax.  And everyone played their parts to perfection.

Shocked, Shocked

Mitt Romney has been hitting Rick Santorum today in Michigan on the revelation that Santorum's campaign has been encouraging Democrats to vote for him in the Michigan primary.  Romney has called the tactic "a new low" and that Democrats and Santorum are "hijacking" the process.  This is interesting when reflecting on the 2008 Democratic primaries during which Rush Limbaugh urged Republicans and conservatives to vote for Hillary Clinton.  Granted, this kind of thing is not exactly the best or most principled way to do things but that's because it reflects the flaws in the system itself. All of the primaries should be closed so as to get a more accurate reading of the electorate.

Another take on Romney's stance is this Politico story on his beliefs on this subject back in 1994:

ABC News’ Jonathan Greenberger Reports: Republican presidential candididate Mitt Romney offered a new explanation today for why he supported a Democrat in 1992.

That year, Romney, then a registered independent, voted for former Sen. Paul Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary.  He told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, in an interview that will air Sunday on "This Week," that his vote was meant as a tactical maneuver aimed at finding the weakest opponent for incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

"In Massachusetts, if you register as an independent, you can vote in either the Republican or Democratic primary," said Romney, who until he made an unsuccessful run for Senate in 1994 had spent his adult life as a registered independent. "When there was no real contest in the Republican primary, I’d vote in the Democrat primary, vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican."

Apology Tour

This from Charles Krauthammer on the administration's apology tour since the burning of a Koran by soldiers at Bagram Air Base:

That was embarrassing….

We have gone from apology here to abject self-debasement and groveling. And groveling to whom? To the mob.

We should have had a single apology from the commander on the ground and that’s it. Not from the secretary of defense. Not from the president — of all people.

Remember when the president had to pick up the phone when there was a crazy pastor in Florida who wanted a Koran burning and he had to be talked out of it? Is the president in charge of offenses against certain religious traditions in the world?

This is a world in which nobody asked the Islamic Conference, the grouping of 56 Islamic countries, to issue an apology when Christians are attacked and churches are burned in Egypt or Pakistan. And had we heard a word from any Islamic leader anywhere about radical Muslims in Nigeria who are not only burning churches but are burning women and children in the churches?

When I hear that [apology], I’ll expect the president to start issuing apologies.

And, in fact, I’m not sure the argument [that] you have to do it [issue a presidential apology] to protect our soldiers is correct. The fact is that after the president apologized — and after we have been on our knees groveling — there was increase in the violence. It isn’t as if it has had any effect whatsoever. It whets the appetite. People love to see America on its knees.

And second, on the idea that the leader, Muslim leaders in the world [do] apologize. There are 56 nations in the Islamic Conference. Has one apologized for the attacks on Copts in Egypt?

Has the leader in Egypt himself apologized? No….

The reason we’re apologizing is not because of politeness or showing respect. A single apology would have done that. It’s the fear of violence. People don’t object if Mormons are mocked on Broadway, if Christian crucifixes are put in bottles of urine and displayed in a museum, because violence isn’t a factor.

[Regarding Islam, however] people are afraid. You do a cartoon of Muhammad and you get beheaded or shot. It’s a matter of fear. It’s not respect. One apology is correct. It [the administration’s multiple apologies] shouldn’t have been done — all of this stuff is cravenness.

I think that's about all that needs to be said on that subject.

Something's Missing

Steve Hayward has a great essay in the Daily Caller that highlights something major that has been largely missing from the Republican debates:  talk of the Constitution.  Aside from some vague references by Ron Paul, virtually no time has been given for the candidates to discuss their own views on the Constitution and how it should be interpreted.  This trend is very different from previous presidents

and successful presidential campaigns, which often signaled important changes in direction in our understanding of the Constitution by making sustained arguments about its meaning. In modern times, Franklin Roosevelt made an extensive argument, on the eve of the 1932 election, about why the Constitution needed to be understood in new ways amidst the crisis of the Great Depression, and then again in his infamous “court packing” crusade in his second term. A few years before FDR, Calvin Coolidge, who was not the “Silent Cal” of historical repute, argued vigorously against the Progressive Era idea that’s come to be known as the “living Constitution.” And the most prominent champion of that idea was Woodrow Wilson, who enjoys the dubious reputation of being the first president to criticize the Constitution openly.

Hayward points to the logic of judicial supremacy and the media's general apathy to such questions as the main reason for this abdication:

Both liberal and conservative candidates do themselves and the American people a disservice in reinforcing the idea of judicial supremacy — the idea that the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is, rather than belonging to all three coequal branches of government and, ultimately, to the people. Maybe we shouldn’t blame the candidates alone for this strange gap in our modern practices. The media doesn’t reflect much on the Constitution beyond self-interested particulars of the First Amendment. And most of the leading textbooks about the presidency contain little or no discussion of the constitutional context of the office, instead treating the president as just a grander variation of a corporate CEO.

Update:  I sold Rick Santorum a little short.  See his meditation on the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The Heart of the Regime

In the newest Heritage Foundation First Principles paper, Christian Fritz focuses on the tempting doctrine of nullification and finds it to be at odds with the constitutionalism of the Founders, especially that of James Madison.  In the Virginia Resolution of 1798, in protesting the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the administration of John Adams, Madison talked of interposition, a doctrine that has become very hazy since that time.  As Fritz shows, interposition should not be confused with nullification; it was instead understood at that time to include the many constitutional methods that the states had recourse to in combating federal legislation that they deemed to be unconstitutional.  According to Madison, interposition

...usually involved an action that came between the people as the sovereign and the sovereign’s agent, the government. This interposition was not a sovereign act, since the people as the collective sovereign did not take that step. It did not break the ties between the people and their government by, for example, nullifying laws. Rather, the interposer, through public opinion, protests, petitions, or even the state legislatures acting as an instrument of the people, focused attention on whether the government was acting in conformity with the people’s mandates as expressed in their constitutions.

The main reason for interposition was due to the lack of communication across the vast areas of land of the new Republic.  Travel took days, and news of the goings on in Congress was obviously much slower than just simply turning on CSPAN.

Madison made clear in his Virginia Resolution that the resolution was not an act of force (that's really the definition of a resolution passed by a state legislature).  It did not nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts because Madison knew that the state legislatures had no power under the Constitution to do such an act; the resolution simply communicated to the other states that Virginia thought the acts in question were unconstitutional.  Interestingly enough, the word nullification was never mentioned in the Virginia Resolution nor in Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution of 1798 (it was included in the revised Kentucky Resolution of 1799).  Madison issued the Report of 1800 in which he again maintained and clarified the arguments he espoused in the Virginia Resolution.

During the nullification crisis of 1832, John C. Calhoun and members of the South Carolina legislature co-opted the arguments of Madison and Jefferson and used them as the basis for the theory of nullification--that a single state had the power to void federal law.  This is how Madison responded to Calhoun and those who would use his name as an authority for nullification:

Madison insisted that neither he nor Jefferson was responsible for nullification, a doctrine with a “fatal tendency.” Rather than protecting the diverse interests of the Union, Madison believed, nullification put “powder under the Constitution and Union, and a match in the hand” of any faction, leaving it to their whim whether “to blow them up.” Secession was a “twin” to the “heresy” of nullification, warned Madison. Both doctrines sprang “from the same poisonous root.” The growth from this root would bring “disastrous consequences.” By 1832, he noted how inexpressibly “painful” it was that Calhoun’s doctrine might cause the Constitution to be “broken up and scattered to the winds.”

Madison based this on the constitutionalism of the founding era:

As Madison explained, the Constitution was “a mixture of both” consolidated and confederated governments. Neither [Daniel] Webster’s claim that the American people in “the aggregate” were the sovereign who formed the Constitution nor Calhoun’s position that individual sovereign states were the parties creating the Constitution accurately described the federal founding. Rather, “the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people…as imbodied into the several States…and, therefore, made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity.”[56] States acting in their highest sovereign capacity were not the sovereign people of each state acting individually. According to Madison, a state acted in its “highest sovereign capacity” only when the sovereign people of the state acted in combination with the sovereign people of other states.[57]

During the federal convention, Madison had argued that the sovereign was the people in the discrete states acting collectively. The draft constitution, he noted, sprang “not immediately from the people, but from the States which they respectively composed.” During the ratification debate, he identified the sovereign behind the Constitution as “the people of America,” acting “not as individuals composing one entire nation; but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.”[58]

The call for nullification today mainly extends from paleoconservatives and followers of the Austrian economics of Ludwig Von Mises, but it has reared its head in many Tea Party and 9/12 groups.  Conservatives need to reclaim the principles of the Founding and understand them as the Founders understood them.  These questions are paramount because they go the heart of the nature of the Union and who we are as a people.

Uneven Treatment

Gas prices have been on the rise lately, and it's all the fault of President Obama and his oil drilling cronies in the Big Oil companies...oh, I am sorry, that was the typical criticism hurled at President Bush and his administration.  Now that gas prices are again on the rise, where is the criticism from the media?

From Doug Powers:

Duelin’ headlines:

NYT March 2011 ($3.57 a gallon): US better prepared for rising gas costs

NYT August 2005 ($2.55 a gallon): Economy shows signs of strain from oil prices

What CNN reported about the control the president has over the gas prices in April of last year:

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama confronted two political realities this week:

– Rising gas prices are bad for a politician's poll numbers

– There is almost nothing a politician can do about it, at least in the short run.

And what they reported in 2008 during the last few days of the Bush Administration:

Before departing the White House early Monday for a farewell tour of Europe, President Bush stole a page from his predecessor and suggested he feels American consumers' pain.

"A lot of Americans are concerned about our economy," Bush said. "I can understand why. Gasoline prices are high, energy prices are high. I do remind them that we have put a stimulus package forward that is expected to help boost the economy. And of course, we'll be monitoring the situation."

Americans are looking for more action, though, than monitoring the situation.

And here is then-Senator Obama back in 2008 on how rising gas prices are a bad thing:

Oh, wait...nevermind.

Deconstructing Affirmative Action

At No Left Turns, Claremont Institute Fellow Bill Voegeli answers the typical arguments in favor of affirmative action (this is in light of the news this past week that the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari in the case of Fisher v. Texas, a case that revolves around the constitutionality of the affirmative action program deployed by the University of Texas).  Bill does a masterful job of exploding the typical liberal arguments brought by Joel Mathis, who is in favor of affirmative action.  Here is Voegeli's summation of the arguments:

1. Diversity is good because diversity is good: "Why should diversity be a goal? That's easy," Mathis writes. "America is diverse. Unless you believe that white men possess all the talent and smarts - and some people really do believe that - it's criminal not to foster the resources and resourcefulness of all our country's citizens."

2. Fairness demands compensatory justice: "For more than 300 years, America's culture and law enforced racial preferences - whites, of course, were preferred. We still live with the ramifications: A few decades of affirmative action don't make up for the fact that many minority groups weren't allowed to start the 100-yard dash until whites got a 50-yard head start."

3. Affirmative action may be problematic, but its absence would be a significantly bigger problem: "[A]ffirmative action sprung up as a response to an actual problem: That ... 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow left a lot of folks without sufficient resources ... to achieve and succeed on society's new colorblind terms... [A] longstanding legal-cultural regime enforced both by senators and sheriffs for hundreds of years might've caused damage that still needs repair... Simply put, conservatives don't seem to have an animating principle that moves them to address problems of this sort."

The dangers of affirmative action:

I've never met anyone who really does believe that white men possess all the talent and smarts, and neither has Mathis. Happily, his sensible conclusion that we should foster all our citizens' abilities does not follow from his overwrought premise. Neither, however, does support for affirmative action follow from the premise that we should foster all our citizens' abilities. We - as a society, not just through public policies - should do so through good schools, safe and cohesive neighborhoods, strong families, voluntary organizations that deepen an ethos of caring and sharing, a vigorous economy that expands opportunities, and by strengthening the ties of affection and respect that bind Americans as Americans closer together by transcending race, class, faith, and ethnicity.  

Affirmative action is irrelevant or harmful to the goal of fostering every American's resources and resourcefulness. Instead of encouraging people to make the most of their abilities, it rewards them for making the most of their grievances, allocating opportunities and outcomes by calibrating the impact of the historical victimization of a large group on the life prospects of individual members of that group.

That enterprise isn't feasible, and wouldn't be fair if it were feasible. The rectification of racial injustice through affirmative action requires us to be a great deal smarter than we can be. In the 1978 Bakke decision, Justice Harry Blackmun defended affirmative action as a way of "putting minority [medical school] applicants in the position they would have been in if not for the evil of racial discrimination." The problem, as Thomas Sowell explained in Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?, is that "the idea of restoring groups to where they would have been - and what they would have been" if past discrimination had never taken place, "presupposes a range of knowledge that no one has ever possessed."

Although intended as a corrective to right the wrongs done in the past, affirmative action is nothing more than a violation of the natural rights with which all men are equally endowed, regardless of race, religion, or gender.

 

Paul's Strategy

What's Ron Paul been up to lately in the debates?  He never went after Mitt Romney, and instead, he focused his firepower on whoever at that time was the main challenger to Romney.  Is there a secret blood oath?  Is Romney a closet Paleolibertarian?  Is Ron Paul a closet moderate? 

Pete Spiliakos has the best reasoning I have seen so far on this seemingly weird pact:

Romney is the establishment safe choice and he is actually running to be president.  Ron Paul knows he isn’t “safe”, knows he isn’t getting the establishment nod, and he isn’t going to be president.  What he is trying to be is the conservative alternative in the race and to redefine ”conservative” to include his combination of spending policies, monetary policies, drug policies, foreign policies, etc.  But if he is going to get the real, authentic, liberty-loving, slot (or as much of it as can be gotten), he has to prevent any of the anti-Romneys from establishing themselves as real conservatives.  That means he has to go at Perry, and Gingrich and Santorum depending on who is doing best.  If any of them become the chief alternative to Romney, then Paul is left out in the cold. 

Politics in the Age of Obama

"I leave it up to the government to make good decisions for Americans."  This was what NASCAR driver Danica Patrick, a practicing Catholic, had to say in response to the HHS ruling to require that religions institutions cover contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients.

Scary.

The Man of La Mancha

A story that has been quickly gaining ground is this Daily Caller investigative piece by Tucker Carlson on Media Matters and its founder, David Brock.  Media Matters was founded in 2004 by Brock as an antidote the what he saw as "conservative misinformation."  Since that time Media Matters has supplied stories and narratives for the mainstream media and many columnists on all the major papers including the Washington Post, New York Times, and L.A. Times.  Here is what a former Media Matters employee had to say about the influence Brock had over the media:  “We were pretty much writing their prime time,” a former Media Matters employee said of the cable channel MSNBC. “But then virtually all the mainstream media was using our stuff.”  Since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, MM also has had great influence inside the White House as well:

A group with the ability to shape news coverage is of incalculable value to the politicians it supports, so it’s no surprise that Media Matters has been in regular contact with political operatives in the Obama administration. According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.

 And:

Media Matters also began a weekly strategy call with the White House, which continues, joined by the liberal Center for American Progress think tank. Jen Psaki, Obama’s deputy communications director, was a frequent participant before she left for the private sector in October 2011.

The war on Fox News, which the president and his administration has joined in as well:

In the past several years, Media Matters has focused much of its considerable energy on the Fox News Channel. The network, declares one internal memo, “is the de facto leader of the GOP and it is long past time that it was treated as such by the media, elected officials, and the public.” At the end of September 2009, Burns made the case publicly in an interview on MSNBC.

Fox, he said, “is a political organization, and their aim is to destroy a progressive policy agenda.”

Less than a month later, in language that could have been copied directly from a Media Matters press release, White House communications director Anita Dunn leveled almost precisely the same charge, dismissing Fox as “more a wing of the Republican Party.”

Carlson also highlights the strange and erratic behavior of Brock, who is so paranoid that he is always accompanied by two bodyguards when out in public. One of Brock's former assistants was fired in late 2010 because he was discovered to be carrying a concealed firearm (which of course in Washington D.C. is against the law). Brock seems to be a modern equivalent of Don Quixote, except even the windmills are themselves illusions of his own making.

It will be very interesting to see what's deeper down the rabbit hole.

True American Genius

I think this headline says it all:  "Man Faces Charges After Cooking Own Meal At Denny's."

The Problems with Our Language

Tommy DeSano at Ricochet has a great essay on the strangeness of our language today and how we should all blame the medical community for our current plight (just kidding, but only sort of).  The first example is the word "chink" which got an ESPN editor fired and an anchor kicked off the air for 25 days for using it in a story about Jeremy Lin, a point guard for the New York Knicks who happens to be of Asian heritage.  Here is Tommy:

The etymology of the phrase “chink in the armor” goes back to The Middle Ages when men fought in suits of armor.  One would look for a chink, as in a hole (chink actually means hole), in the armor of the opponent and attack that weak point, hoping to break through his protection to deliver a kill shot.  This action is the same as today’s boxing pugilists who “work the cut” when one develops over an opponent's eye.  All of it has absolutely nothing to do with race.  Finding a “chink in the armor” of an opponent is a common sports euphemism used by Federico a hundred times in the past, by his own account.  Not one Asian congresswoman ever complained about it.

Certainly the word “chink” was later bastardized (my apologies to the children of unmarried couples) into a slur referencing the shape of Asian eyes.  That, of course, still has nothing to do with the medieval concept of attacking an opponent’s weak point.

Next is the word "niggardly":

Controversy recently surrounded the word “niggardly.”  It is a word of Nordic etymology that means a small sum, having nothing to do with race.  The N-word* is a slur of Latin etymology (Latin for the color black is niger) that has nothing to do with sums.  They aren’t even homonyms as they are spelled differently (note the “er” vs the “ar” difference).  At best, they share an inexact phonetic sound, making the two words about as related as Jeremy Lin and Loretta Lynn.

Back in 1999, David Howard was a white aid to black DC mayor Anthony Williams.  Howard referred to that year’s budget as “niggardly,” noting of course its size, not its color.  Swift came the allegations of racism and Howard tendered his resignation and the Mayor accepted it.  What happened next confounds those of us trying to navigate the new language rules.  Howard is gay.  The gay community lobbied for his reinstatement, and the Mayor offered to re-hire him.  I’m not sure if that means gays can’t be racist, blacks can’t fire gays, niggardly is not the N-word for thee but is for me, or something else.

On the strange idea that some words are to be used only by people of a certain race:

Owned” words are now becoming fashionable.  For instance, black people are claiming dominion over he N-word.*  Recently on “The View,” Sherry Shepard took the position that it is OK for black actress Whoopi Goldberg to pronounce the N-word* in full but not OK for white host Barbara Walters to do it.  According to this new English language rule we must not judge one’s speech on the content of their word characters but on the color of their skin.

The owned word rule really took shape when white radio and TV personality Don Imus was fired by MSNBC for joking that the Rutgers girls basketball team, in comparison to their opponents, looked like “nappy headed hos.”  The use of the word “ho” in particular was seen as a horrible affront to black women. The issue was so important that NJ Governor Jon Corzine was critically injured in a high-speed car accident as he raced to get to a meeting between Imus and a black pastor to fashion Imus’ public apology.

The same year Imus was fired, the song that won the Oscar was “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp.” While lamenting the difficulties of mastering prostitutes, the song, now enshrined in pop culture with such beautiful music as "Over the Rainbow," also referred to black women as “bitches” “niggas” and “hos.”  Not one college basketball team complained about it.

The strange cycle in which words are accorded meaning and then banished:

There is a cycle that repeats itself in the world of insults, having to do with adopting scientific medical terms and using them as insults. The weird rules that apply to “socially acceptable” insults eventually catches up to the medical dictionary usurpers and the PC police try to shut them down. Some insults, it seems, are just too insulting.

But the usurpers have traditionally won the battle, and the medical terms are removed from the medical books, to live out eternity in the land of misfit words.

If I don't stop now, I think I might quote the entire essay.  I will just leave it to you to read the rest.

Santorum and Satan

The big news surrounding the Republican race yesterday and today involves a speech Rick Santorum gave in 2008 to the Ave Maria University where he said the following:

This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America's preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.

He didn't have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.

He was successful. He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they're smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.

And you say "what could be the impact of academia falling?" Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I'm going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.

A partial transcript is here and the audio is here.  It is interesting to note that Ave Maria was the same place that Reagan gave his famous Evil Empire speech.

I guess I just don't see what all the fuss is about, considering the audience and that he was not speaking as an elected official.  I would think that since most Americans assume that since God exists, they would think that the Devil exists as well.  Basically, isn't this a fairly normal belief among Christians (and not only just among Christians), no matter the denomination?  And what about respecting one's religious liberty?  Rush Limbaugh has a thought-provoking take here:

I mean who is the better Catholic example, Ted Kennedy or Rick Santorum?  And who has been lionized by our media, and who is being castigated, laughed at, made fun of and destroyed, or the attempt to destroy being made?  It would be Santorum.  Aren't we constantly told that we must always respect people for their religious beliefs?  Or does that only apply to Democrats and Muslims?  And nobody else's religious beliefs, Christian beliefs, they're gonna come down hard on you if you express yours.  Nobody ever attacks Obama for his religious beliefs when he trots 'em out for political purposes, like saying Jesus would agree with my tax increases on the rich.

And here is what a highly reputable source on the subject had to say:

Phony Theology

Over the weekend while on the stump in Ohio, Rick Santorum got himself in trouble with the MSM for saying that President's Obama's environmental policies are based on "phony theology."  Shortly thereafter, paper bags could be heard crinkling in newsrooms around the U.S.

In a press conference after the remarks, Santorum was asked about the "incident" 6 times and repeatedly stated that he was simply trying to convey the idea the president holds "different moral values."  But for all the over-the-top reaction, why hasn't anyone called out Bill Clinton and Jay Carney on their use of the word theology?  Here is President Clinton in 1997:

We passed the family and medical leave law. There were a lot of Republicans who voted for that—I'll give them credit for that—far more Democrats. My predecessor had vetoed it twice. Why? Because their theology said—their theology said it's a nice thing if people can spend a little time with their new-born babies or if someone in their family gets sick, but we couldn't think of requiring it because it would hurt the economy and the economy is always the most important thing.

And here is Jay Carney during a press briefing on December 13th:

"Now, what we have seen from Republicans in Congress is the promulgation of this idea that passing a tax cut for middle-class Americans is somehow a favor they would be doing for the President of the United States. Most of my adult life, the Republican theology has been tax cuts for everyone are the highest priority. "

In Honor of Washington

As you all know, today is President's Day.  It was originally a federal holiday to honor George Washington's birthday but was later expanded to include the birthday of Abraham Lincoln as well.  Now, however, it encompasses all presidents, implicitly putting them all in the same place of honor.  Seems strange to be honoring Washington and Lincoln at the same as James Buchanan and Woodrow Wilson.

Since I've already written on Lincoln's birthday, let's take some time to remember Washington and his legacy:

Washington took care “that the laws be faithfully executed,” as when he quashed the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. He did not try to make the laws himself, either by issuing executive orders that circumvented Congress or by regulating what could not be legislated. He left behind no “signature” legislative accomplishments as we would say today. He only used his veto twice–once on constitutional grounds and once in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief.

Washington gave, on average, only three public speeches a year while in office–including the shortest ever inaugural address. And, of course, he had to be persuaded to serve a second term.

As a President who took his bearings from the Constitution, Washington devoted considerable attention to foreign policy. Our first President sought to establish an energetic and independent foreign policy. He believed America needed a strong military so that it could “choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice shall Counsel.” His Farewell Address remains the preeminent statement of purpose for American foreign policy.

No survey of Washington’s legacy would be complete without acknowledging his profound commitment to religious liberty. Many today seem to have lost sight of the crucial distinction he drew between mere toleration and true religious liberty. As he explained in the memorable letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport:

All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.

Mitt the Inevitable

I usually agree with almost everything John Hinderaker has to say but this post is just really off base.  Hinderaker argues that Republican in-fighting is going to cause the election to tilt in favor of Obama, and we should all just do what we know is right in our heart of hearts and support Mitt Romney.  About once a week now, he has written one of these types of posts, always arguing that Romney is the most electable Republican and that this in-fighting will doom Republicans in the general election.

Romney though is far from the inevitable president that Hinderaker makes him out to be.  As Republicans and conservatives have gotten to know Romney--remember, this isn't his first rodeo--they seem to like him less and less.  Romney's seeming lack of principles in light of his continued defense of Romneycare among other things is making them look for an alternative who can articulate the principles of conservatism--the principles of the American Founding.  Rather than this being a negative, it is a positive that they are scouring the field for the best defender of those principles as opposed to looking for the next cult of personality.  It seems better that they go with someone they genuinely believe is the best representation of conservatism than someone who they begrudgingly back just because they are the next in line (e.g., see Dole, Bob and McCain, John).  It seems as though principled conservative candidates have lost not because they are too conservative but because they haven't gone about educating and persuading the American people on the principles of conservatism.

John then argues that nominating Rick Santorum will simply focus this election on social conservatism when it should be focused above all on the economy.  Rightly understood, social, economic, and all other major political issues emanate from the same central principles.  I am not sure why John buys into the idea of sectioning off these issues into distinct and separate categories; they are all interconnected.  Also, it wasn't the Republicans who wanted to talk primarily about the so-called social issues:  it was the media who began asking these types of questions months ago before the HHS mandate and the Susan G. Komen Foundation vs. Planned Parenthood battle.  Does John honestly believe that by nominating Romney, all of this will just magically disappear?  What about Romney's supposed gaffes around a month ago about not caring about the very poor?  The media seemed to focus on that pretty heavily, and that had nothing to do with abortion or contraception.  And what about Romney's Mormonism, which polls show seems to scare away more Democrats than Republicans?  As low a form of politics as it is, do not be surprised if this, even by implications left unsaid, becomes a focus of Obama's re-election strategy should Romney win the nomination.

Whoever wins the nomination, whether it be Romney or Santorum, the media will focus on anything they can to drag them down.  So just because Bob Schieffer asked Rick Santorum a bunch of questions on social issues this morning on Face the Nation, do not think that he and rest of the media would not do something similar if Romney becomes the nominee.

Did John Adams Support the Individual Mandate?

Dr. Paul Rahe, continuing a post a while back on why both Romneycase and Obamacare are tyrannical, unconstitutional, and against the natural rights principles of the American Founding, addresses the argument of a Romney supporter who contends that under the Massachusetts Constitution, Romneycare is constitutional by way of the state's police powers as they were understood in 1780.

Here is Rahe:

Here is the first paragraph of the preamble to that Constitution:

The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government is to secure the existence of the body-politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying, in safety and tranquillity, their natural rights and the blessings of life; and whenever these great objects are not obtained the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity, and happiness.

It needs to be read in conjunction with the first article of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights (which follows immediately upon the preamble):

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

There are two things worth noticing – the emphasis on “natural rights and the blessings of life” in the first paragraph of the preamble and the list of “certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights” in the first article of the Declaration of Rights – among which can be found the right “of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property.”

And on the argument that under Article III of that Constitution, one could read into the supposed constitutionality of a scheme like Romneycare:

...the third article of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, which reads as follows:

As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God and of the public instructions in piety, religion, and morality: Therefore, To promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies-politic or religious societies to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily.

That a mandate is involved is clear. But it is not an individual mandate...It is a mandate directed to “towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic or religious societies,” which is to say, it is comparable to the obligations that states impose on local governments today, and it specifies one way in which those local governments in Massachusetts are to spend the revenues they raise by taxation.

In summation of Romney and his continued defense of Romneycare:

It is a shame that there is no one in his entourage ready and able to explain to Mitt Romney the profound damage that he did when he ushered Romneycare into existence in Massachusetts. There is nothing more impressive than when a proud man stands up to confess that, in the past, he made a terrible mistake.

Schlesinger as Expert

Peter Robinson reminisces on an Arthur Schlesinger Jr. quote from the Cold War:

"Those in the U.S. who think the Soviet Union is on the verge of economic...collapse," wrote Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 1981, "are only kidding themselves."

And to think that the works of Arthur Schlesinger Sr. and Jr. have defined U.S. history in the twentieth century...scary.

See Thomas Silver's Coolidge and the Historians for a complete deconstruction of the revisionism of the Schlesingers and historians like them.

Santorum in Columbus

Today, the biggest news concerning the Republican race was the switch of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine from being a Romney delegate to now being a Santorum delegate.  Early in the afternoon, I learned of the location of the announcement--which was on the east side of the Ohio Statehouse--and decided to see Santorum for myself (I work close by).  Both locally and nationally this announcement was a surprise, especially considering that AG DeWine was always closely connected with the Republican old guard, which mostly swing in Romney's direction.

Santorum gave a quick speech and then answered questions, naturally the first of which were on his views on contraception (he just wants to outlaw it all, don't you know?).  As he was being directed back through the small crowd that gathered, I got a chance to shake his hand.  Not many opportunities arise to do something like that.

Hindsight

Remember in the Republican debate in New Hampshire when moderator George Stephanopoulos asked so many questions on contraception?  Remember how it seemed awfully weird at the time?  It's almost as if he knew what would be coming just around the bend...

Lessons for Future Presidents

In today's USA Today, Steven Hayward of Power Line and AEI fame has some lessons for the current (I doubt he would listen) and future holders of the White House:

First, the office of the president has expanded considerably. President Ulysses S. Grant ran the White House with a staff of six and President William McKinley had a staff of 27. Today, there are several hundred people on the White House staff as well as the nearly 3,000 executive branch appointments the president must make upon taking office.

Second, the president speaks to us almost daily, in person, in written comments, or through senior staff or spokespersons such as the White House press secretary, who offers daily briefings to reporters. Some day, it might occur to a president that one secret of preserving public support is to talk less. Before the 20th century, presidents spoke publicly very seldom, and then usually in the most general terms.

[...]

Third, though all presidents and candidates for the office emphasize their "leadership vision" for the country, this has led to a counterproductive inflation of our expectations that no president can fulfill. As the Cato Institute's Gene Healy puts it, "We still expect the commander in chief to heal the sick, save us from hurricanes, and provide balm for our itchy souls."

Much of how we think about the presidency today has been heavily influenced by twentieth century progressives, chief amongst them being Woodrow Wilson and FDR.  The influences abound from the president delivering the State of the Union before the other branches of government in a joint session of Congress (before Wilson, presidents had their annual addresses read by a House clerk) to the value-free language we use when we talk about the presidency (e.g., the words vision, leadership, narrative, etc. come to mind).  We would do well if future president follow some of Hayward's advice.  Also, be sure to check out his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents:  From Wilson to Obama.

A Right to Healthcare?

The Ohio Farmer delves deeper in to the political language we use today concerning rights, especially when connected to the claim that all Americans have a "right" to healthcare:

To think of health care as an entitlement, as President Obama does, is to think that all Americans somehow deserve to have health care given to us. But is that not absurd, and does it not tread heavily on our real rights? Health care is provided by people who choose to become doctors, nurses, therapists, and aides. What "right" do we have to force them to give us their services—anymore than they have a right to force us to give them our labor, whatever our job is? After all, if no one chooses to become a doctor, how could we demand to have a doctor's services given to us? Could we rightly force an unwilling person to become a doctor just so we could make her give us medical services? Of course not.

Opposed to the idea of rights as understood by Obama stand the natural rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence:

All human beings are born with [natural rights]—endowed with them by our Creator, as the Declaration of Independence says—not given them by any government.  It doesn’t make sense to say all Americans "should" have or "should not" have the right to life, for example: we "do" have it, as do all other human beings, simply by virtue of being human beings. Government exists to protect our natural rights, not to grant them. And certain of these rights, like the right to life, no one on earth can give or take away: they are "unalienable."

A Call to Arms

In a follow up to his brilliant post over the weekend, Paul Rahe takes a tour of the moral devastation wrought by Cardinal Bernardin--from his unfortunate ventures into Left wing politics to his complicity in the culture of corruption and secrecy that bred the sexual abuse scandals that broke in the early part of the last decade.  To sum up the Bernardin era in American Catholicism:

...Catholic clergymen lost their way. On questions of faith and morals, they spoke in at best a muted fashion. On political questions beyond their ken, they ran their mouths incessantly. To professed Catholics who openly rejected the teaching of the Church on the pre-eminent moral issue of the day, they lent their support.  Barack Obama has now shown them the price that they will have to pay if they do not radically reverse course. Maybe, just maybe, they will.

But maybe the massive overstep of the HHS ruling regarding religious institutions has finally awakened the Catholic Church from its long slumber.

The Real Real Lincoln

The Heritage Foundation has just published a great essay by Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo on whether or not Lincoln was the true progenitor of the unlimited government we have today.  Guelzo writes this in response both to the use of Lincoln by modern liberals and recent libertarian and conservative scholarship--and I use the term loosely--on the supposed racist tyrant that was Lincoln.  The latter can be best seen in the unfortunately widely-read Politically Incorrect Guide (P.I.G.) to American History, P.I.G. to the Constitution, P.I.G. on the South, and P.I.G. to the Civil War. 

Here is the abstract so that you can get a flavor of the essay:

Early Progressives co-opted Abraham Lincoln’s legacy to justify their program of expansive government powers over American life. In so doing, they obscured how their philosophy of government broke with Lincoln and the Founding to which he was heir. Nevertheless, much conservative and libertarian thinking today has assumed, at once and without serious reflection, that the Progressives’ appropriation of Lincoln (and the continued appropriation of Lincoln by the American Left) was legitimate—rather like mistaking a hostage taken by terrorists to be one of the terrorists himself. But Abraham Lincoln is not, and nor was his Administration, any model for what today seems so objectionable in the modern welfare state. His unwavering commitment to natural rights and the Constitution’s framework of limited government, as well as the comparatively limited forces he called into the defense of the nation during the Civil War, not only place him in philosophical opposition to the Left, but dispel any notions that he set the stage for the expansion of government in the 20th century.

Also see Guelzo's Lincoln's Emaciation Proclamation.  It is the best book ever written on the subject.

Lew's Lies

Yesterday on CNN's State of the Union Jack Lew, President Obama's Chief of Staff, said the following in response to Candy Crowley on why the Senate has yet to pass a budget in over three years:

LEW: Let's be clear, what Senator Reid is talking about is a fairly narrow point. In order for the Senate to do its annual work on appropriation bills they need to pass a certain piece of legislation which sets a limit. They did that last year. That's what he's talking about. He's not saying that they shouldn't pass a budget, but we also need to be honest you can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can't get 60 votes without the bipartisan support. So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate Harry Reid is not able to get a budget passed. And I think he was reflecting the reality that that could be a challenge.

But, as John Hinderaker notes, that's simply not true.  The budget cannot be filibustered, and it can be passed by a simple majority of 51 votes; it does not require a super majority.  Thankfully, some of the MSM have noticed (e.g., Jake Tapper, Glenn Kessler, etc.,).  White House officials now say that Lew simply "misspoke."  But it's obvious that he didn't considering he gave the same answer to multiple news sources.

This is what happens when you really don't care about what the Constitution says.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln!

Today is the birthday of our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.  Lincoln was born in 1809 to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky.  Lincoln of course would go on to be our 16th president, but politics was far from central in his life until much later on.  He served only a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives, which was highlighted by his opposition to the Mexican-American War.  Lincoln stayed mostly out of the spotlight of national politics (he served four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives) and worked as lawyer in Springfield, Ill, traveling the circuit for 10 weeks every year.

This all changed in 1854 with the now-infamous Kansas-Nebraska Act, which was authored by then-Senator Stephen Douglas.  Lincoln saw that in foul swoop, this act wiped away the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and single-handedly altered the compromises of the Constitution concerning slavery (the Dred Scott decision would sever whatever connection was left concerning the principle of equality and the Constitution).  Douglas proposed that the people of the territories be able to choose by democratic processes whether or not they want slavery.  Lincoln saw that this move would be "blowing the moral lights out around us" and that if slavery is truly a wrong, that "no man can logically say [like Douglas] he don't care whether a wrong is voted up or voted down."

Lincoln's politics were based upon the self-evident truths contained within the Declaration of Independence.  Lincoln saw that there existed eternal rules of right and wrong which did not change with the times, and could not be altered by an up or down vote.  The natural law and natural right principles Lincoln espoused and taught are particularly an anathema to much of the politics of today, which can be encapsulated in the now-common refrain that "you can't put your values on anyone else."

Here is Scott Johnson from Powerline on how Lincoln should be remembered today:

...Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal. How can it be that lawyers know so little of the giant of their profession?

Jacksonian Politics

Samuel L. Jackson, that is.  Here is his thoughtful, wisdom-filled soliloquy on the reason he voted for President Obama in 2008: 

In an interview with Ebony magazine, Jackson explained, "I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them ... That's American politics, pure and simple. [Obama's] message didn't mean [bleep] to me."

And some more insights on the Obama Administration since 2008:

Jackson then went on to drop the N-word several times when discussing Obama, telling the mag, "When it comes down to it, they wouldn't have elected a [bleep]. Because, what's a [bleep]? A [bleep] is scary. Obama ain't scary at all. [Bleeps] don't have beers at the White House. [Bleeps] don't let some white dude, while you in the middle of a speech, call [him] a liar. A [bleep] would have stopped the meeting right there and said, ‘Who the [bleep] said that?' I hope Obama gets scary in the next four years, 'cuz he ain't gotta worry about getting re-elected."

If only we could have some more minds like Samuel L. Jackson in American politics...

Sacrifices on the Altar of Modern Liberalism

Paul Rahe does it again.  In light of yesterday's "compromise" by the Obama Administration on the HHS ruling requiring religious institutions such as hospitals and universities to offer in their health care plans sterilization, contraception, and abortifacients (Yuval Levin finds that nothing of moral substance was changed in the slightest), Dr. Rahe takes an extended walk through the political and philosophic aspects of the history of the Catholic Church that bear on this problem.  Rahe finds that at least as far back as the Magna Carta, there was

...within each political community in the Christian West an imperium in imperio – a power independent of the state that had no desire to replace the state but was fiercely resistant to its own subordination and aware that it could not hope to retain its traditional liberties if it did not lend a hand in defending the traditional liberties of others.

I am not arguing that the Church fostered limited government in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. In principle, the government that it fostered was unlimited in its scope. I am arguing, however, that the Church worked assiduously to hem in the authority of the Christian kings and that its success in this endeavor provided the foundation for the emergence of a parliamentary order. Indeed, I would go further. It was the Church that promoted the principles underpinning the emergence of parliaments. It did so by fostering the species of government had emerged within the church itself.

John Locke, working within the circumstances brought on by the Reformation, which promoted an insidious combination of the Church and Crown, laid the foundation for a politics based not on sectarian struggles but on political liberty, which meant in practice an earthly government of limited powers.  Locke's political philosophy had powerful effects on the American Founding: 

In the nascent American republic, this principle was codified in its purest form in the First Amendment to the Constitution. But it had additional ramifications as well – for the government’s scope was limited also in other ways. There were other amendments that made up what we now call the Bill of Rights, and many of the states prefaced their constitutions with bills of rights or added them as appendices. These were all intended to limit the scope of the government. They were all designed to protect the right of individuals to life, liberty, the acquisition and possession of property, and the pursuit of happiness as these individuals understood happiness. Put simply, liberty of conscience was part of a larger package.

But, due to the Machiavellian principle of wanting Heaven on earth--achieved through the administrative state begun by early twentieth century Progressives--, American Catholics began chartering a different course:

In the process, the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.

And the kicker:

At every turn in American politics since that time [the 1930's], you will find the hierarchy assisting the Democratic Party and promoting the growth of the administrative entitlements state. At no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals. It did not cross the minds of these prelates that the liberty of conscience which they had grown to cherish is part of a larger package – that the paternalistic state, which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would someday turn on the Church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, more generally, it would conduct its affairs.

I would submit that the bishops, nuns, and priests now screaming bloody murder have gotten what they asked for. The weapon that Barack Obama has directed at the Church was fashioned to a considerable degree by Catholic churchmen. They welcomed Obamacare. They encouraged Senators and Congressmen who professed to be Catholics to vote for it.

Much of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church today up in arms about the HHS mandate have helped it come to this.  Either knowingly or not, they have undermined the moral ground for serious argument, and instead, they sacrificed it all on the altar of modern liberalism.

This is only a small section of Rahe's overarching argument.  I would strongly advise reading the whole thing. (Please pay special attention to the damage done by Cardinal Bernardin after Roe.)

High Plains Squinter

Iowahawk has a great take on Clint Eastwood's Halftime in America commercial that was shown right before Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show.  Here are some choice excerpts:

Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half. Diagramming plays. Texting their agents and German supermodel wives. Reviewing Belichick's aerial spy photos.

[...]

Sure, I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. I was in 'Every Which Way But Loose,' for crissakes. There were times when we didn’t understand each other, because you complained that I sounded like an emphezema victim who gargled with Grape Nuts. The fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead, no matter how hard I squinted.

[...]

Yeah, it’s halftime America. But we're only down 15.4 trillion to 0. Now let's get back out there and cover the Vegas spread. 

And, speaking of hideous rusted clunkers from Detroit, please enjoy Madonna's halftime show.

The Ninth Circle

To the surprise of no one, yesterday, in a 2-1 decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of Judge Vaughan Walker to overturn the voter approved Proposition 8, the California measure that prohibited same-sex marriage.  The good thing to remember in all this is that the decisions of Judge Stephen Reinhardt, author of the majority opinion in this case, are the most overturned decisions by percentage in the entire U.S. court system.  I will leave close examination of Judge Reinhardt's 77 page opinion to Ed Whelan at Bench Memos.  Among the highlights (or lowlights):

From the very first line of his opinion (“Prior to November 4, 2008, the California Constitution guaranteed the right to marry to opposite-sex couples” (emphasis added)), Reinhardt persistently conflates the California constitution with the state supreme court’s lawless misinterpretation of it. That trick is essential to his line of reasoning—including his extensive reliance on the inscrutable ruling in Romer v. Evans (1995)—for if one recognizes that the people of California, by adopting Proposition 8, exercised their sovereign power to correct the state supreme court’s misreading of the state constitution, then it follows that they didn’t take away anything that the state constitution ever really conferred.

And:

For Reinhardt, “‘marriage’ is the name that society gives to the relationship that matters most between two adults.” (P. 37.) The right to marry that the state supreme court conferred on same-sex couples “symbolize[d] state legitimization and social recognition of their committed relationships.” (P. 5.)

Notice what’s missing from Reinhardt’s description? Any recognition that the very institution of marriage arose and exists in order to encourage responsible procreation and childrearing.

And finally:

If one accepts Reinhardt’s reasoning that dismisses the core rationales for traditional marriage, I don’t see how traditional marriage laws could survive anywhere. In other words, the sweep of Reinhardt’s reasoning is far broader than his purportedly narrow holding.

Whelan rightly points out the obvious:  contra Reinhardt, the logic in his decision would affect the definition of marriage everywhere--not just in California.  There would be no reason why a court in another state would not be able to copy the arguments Reinhardt makes in his opinion.

In closing, Joseph Knippenberg at First Things points out something very important to keep in mind:

I’ll not here rehearse the arguments made over and over again in the past, and that will be repeated endlessly in the coming days. But I will not two points. First, the majority opinion concedes that one purpose of law is to signify “state legitimization and societal recognition.” Does this not amount to moral approval, and does the opinion thus not imply that someone has a right to my moral approval? Or is it possible to argue that law can convey moral disapproval as well? If it can, then using law to convey disapproval is hardly necessarily irrational. Law can certainly tolerate while disapproving, can it not?

If the law can approve, then, logically, it can also disapprove actions as well (e.g., child pornography, human sacrifices in religious ceremonies).  But Reinhardt openly suggests that all who oppose same-sex marriage are irrational bigots.  In arguing against these and like decisions, we must remember that all law has a moral foundation of some kind, no matter how obscure.

Constitutional Confusion

In light of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's open derision of the Constitution last week comes this front page New York Times piece entitled, " 'We the People' Loses Appeal With People Around the World."  Adam Liptak, the author of this piece and the Supreme Court Correspondent for the Times, opens with this salvo:

WASHINGTON — The Constitution has seen better days.  Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

But why would one measure the goodness of the U.S. Constitution by how other countries incorporate it into their own constitutions?

Liptak muses on the reasons for it's waning international influence in a very telling paragraph:

The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige. 

Oh, I see.  It's "old" and "terse" which implicitly means that it must be defective precisely because it's from a past age and reflects past understandings. (Later in the piece, the aptly-named Professor Law says that "no one wants to copy Windows 3.1.") The understanding of "old" is associated with the bad and inferior, a less evolved time.  That must mean that constitutions crafted more recently are automatically superior because of the simple fact that they were crafted closer to the present day.  This is truly the stuff of modern education.

Liptak says that the Constitution "guarantees relatively few rights."  Would freedom of religion or speech exist if it were not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights?   Do the People hold any other rights than those specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights?  Probably unbeknownst to Liptak is the fact that most of the Founders were originally against the inclusion of a Bill of Rights.  Alexander Hamilton saw that "the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS."  Hamilton and the Founders saw that the Magna Carta and other such contracts between kings and subjects always included a bill of rights.  This always implied that the king held the original grant of power and the rights listed were simply exemptions from that general power.  The Founders did eventually compromise and agreed to include the Bill of Rights but with addition of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments so that the People would not be miseducated about the source of their rights.  The rights described in the Constitution were not just creations of the Constitution, creations of the positive law.  The Constitution was created to better secure the pre-existing natural rights that all persons of the species homo sapiens hold by nature.  Without that understanding, you get pieces like Liptak's.

In Liptak's mind, the blames also lies with the justices on the court who are at least serious about fidelity to the Constitution, e.i., Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Alito.  Of course, not being able to tell between the transcendent principles which the Constitution presupposes and the infinite ways those principles manifest themselves makes it doubly hard for Liptak. 

I could go on, but it would take a while to correct all of Liptak's errors.  On that note, I will end with a very prescient thought by Steve Hayward:

Liberals typically erupt in outrage if you suggest they don’t respect or understand the Constitution, let alone defend it.  But then they let slip that in fact they really don’t respect or understand the Constitution.

Amen.

Standing Alone

During a press conference last week, Nancy Pelosi said the following regarding the ruling by the Department of Health and Human Services that Catholic and other religious institutions have to offer contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients in their health care plans:

“First of all, I am going to stick with my fellow Catholics in supporting the administration on this. I think it was a very courageous decision that they made, and I support it.”

But here is Archbishop Timothy Dolan on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

Critics charge that this [new ruling] is an attack on the cornerstone First Amendment freedom that is the very foundation of our democracy. It is. Others assert that it threatens a violation of conscience for millions of Americans. It does. And still others insist it will force an unprecedented choice for many employers to either subsidize what they believe to be immoral, or withdraw health care coverage for their own families and those of their employees. It will.

But the new Health and Human Services ruling is wrong for another reason.

It is egregiously unfair, and as such, it cuts against the grain of what it means to be American.

And here is a link to a letter that was read in Catholic churches around the U.S. a week ago last Sunday.

So it looks like the "fellow" Catholics Pelosi is standing with are but figments of her imagination.

Reagan at 101

Today is Ronald Reagan's 101 birthday.  In honor of one of our greatest presidents, below is one of his most famous speeches.  Still as relevant today as it was in 1964.  Enjoy.

Bad Philosophy

Gleaning from his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, it seems that Preisdent Obama is not much of a theologian.  Well, what about Obama as philosopher?  Here is his mediation on Plato and the golden rule:

...and I believe in God’s command to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”  I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs -– from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato. 

Scott Johnson from Powerline has some thoughts on Plato, classical political philosophy, and James Madison:

Obama also cited Plato as stating a version of the Golden Rule supporting his policies. Where’d he get that Idea? Apparently from a statement made by Socrates in The Republic, but no version of the Golden Rule lends support to the vast expansion of government powers that Obama claims are derived from it.

Except in letters of questionable authenticity, Plato’s writings never speak in Plato’s own voice. His writings are dialogic plays that require close analysis and interpretation. Citing a statement from Plato’s writings for a particular proposition is like citing Shakespeare’s writings for the proposition that life is meaningless. Watching the fate of Socrates in the Athenian democracy, however, Plato was witness to the injustice to which democracy is prone. See Plato’s Apology of Socrates.

Classical political philosophy has guidance to offer even if it doesn’t have the bearing Obama imputes to it. The classic political philosophers were of course aware of Obama’s type; one variation of his type appears in Plato’s dialogues in the personage of Alicibiades. His is a type that thrives in a democracy, but the classic political philosophers thought that the type made democracy unworkable.

The classic political philosophers found democracy to be a threat to property as well as to life. Given that citizens of lesser means always outnumber the rich, they held that government based on majority rule was untenable if not absurd. They were of the view that it would lead to organized theft from the wealthy by the democratic masses. Aristotle observed in The Politics, for example: “If the majority distributes among itself the things of a minority, it is evident that it will destroy the city.”

The Founders of the United States were deep students of politics and history, and they shared Aristotle’s concern. Up through their time, history had shown all known democracies to be “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” James Madison and his colleagues held that the “first object of government” was to protect the rights of property.

The Founders were well aware that political minorities as well as majorities could be dangerous, even fatal, to the operation of government (See Federalist 10).  And this is why they did not establish a pure democracy where the majority gets to do whatever it wants: they established a republic where representatives would represent the people.  This would free debate from passion and focus it on reason and prudence (this is why before the 17th Amendment the U.S. Senate was elected by the state legislatures).  In order to believe this though, one must continuously grapple with these timeless problems and not believe that simply because it's the year 2012 that we have figured this all out and moved on.

Bad Theology

At the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday, President Obama said the following on the relationship between Jesus' teachings and his own policies:

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone.  And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”  It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

But the Biblical quote Obama cites describes the relationship between God (the Master) and how His people should use what God has given them; it is not a pronouncement on the legitimate powers of earthly government.  Here is the full text from Luke 12:35-48, the parable of the faithful servant and the evil servant:

³⁵ “Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; ³⁶ and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, when he will return from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. ³⁷ Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them. ³⁸ And if he should come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. ³⁹ But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and^[d] not allowed his house to be broken into. ⁴⁰ Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

⁴¹ Then Peter said to Him, “Lord, do You speak this parable only to us, or to all people?”

⁴² And the Lord said, “Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season? ⁴³ Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. ⁴⁴ Truly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all that he has. ⁴⁵ But if that servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and be drunk, ⁴⁶ the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. ⁴⁷ And that servant who knew his master’s will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. ⁴⁸ But he who did not know, yet committed things deserving of stripes, shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more.

I have no idea how one gets out of this teaching that the redistribution of money from the wealthy to the rest of us by the government is biblically sanctioned.

And wait, what happened to the whole supposed strict separation between church and state that liberals love to talk about so much--at least when a Republican is in office...

Old Parchment Paper

An interview was recently aired on Egyptian TV with the following advice from an American on what the new Egyptian constitution should try to emulate:

You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary... It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution - Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? 

The person giving the advice?  Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Obviously, the older the constitution, the more defective it is.