9/11 Changed Everything. And Nothing.

In the run-up to the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks Americans have been drowned with reminders of that fateful day. For over a week leading up to the anniversary USA Today ran a series of front-page stories entitled “How 9/11 Changed America.”

Americans have been told that they cannot forget 9/11. The implication is that Americans should not forget about the ghastly images from that day or how they felt. But this is a silly statement.

No can forget 9/11 because no one is allowed to. 9/11 is a part of daily American life. Anyone who flies in a US airport is reminded of the terrorist attacks. Take off your shoes. No liquids. Assume the position.

China-made American flags are still ubiquitous. The obligatory singing of “God Bless America” is as much a part of baseball games as arguing with the umpire and American soldiers are given public spectacles of reverence that are perhaps only outdone in their vacuity by parades in communist countries. Who could possibly forget?

Among the more unreflective clichés that emerged from the attacks was “9/11 Changed Everything.” This was government propaganda because terrorism was neither a new tactic of war nor was Islam a new religion. It reminds one of what Cicero said, "To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child."

A friend recently told me that he had asked his wife if she knew why the terrorist attack happened. She said she didn’t know and had never really thought about it. My friend was surprised but I wasn’t. It’s not that his wife is an ignoramus but most Americans haven’t thought about it. Nor have they been encouraged to do so.

Not a few days after the attack did President Bush get out in front and declare this wasn’t “our” fault and that the terrorists only hate us for our freedoms. He admonished the American people not to dwell upon it. He said, Don’t worry. We who failed so spectacularly on 9/11 will take care of everything. As for you, go shopping. It was an explanation so simplistic and convenient that it shouldn’t have worked on third graders but the American people obeyed without question.

The eventual execution of Osama bin Laden crystallized the so-called post-9/11 world. When the news of bin Laden’s death came, people in the streets and in sports stadiums chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!” But what were they celebrating? The war wasn’t over. Troops weren’t coming home any sooner than scheduled. The one behind the attacks was dead but everything remained exactly the same. What does it say when the death of Public Enemy #1 amounts to nothing?

When Navy SEAL Team 6 got bin Laden they took pictures which were not released and they buried the body quickly. In retrospect, it’s almost like the death never happened.

In May, I theorized that the burial happened that way so the national security state could continue as before with few questions asked. In what should have been an ideal time to consider dismantling at least parts of the national security bureaucracy, the speedy burial meant the resumption of “normalcy” regarding the post-9/11 world. No one asked, Why, if all it took was a unit of well-trained soldiers to track down bin Laden, were large armies stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq? Indeed, things would go on as before.

That is the legacy of September 11, 2001.

Everything changed and nothing changed.

When Osama bin Laden was found hiding in plain sight in Pakistan and there were zero consequences for Pakistan's duplicity, that should have exposed once and for all the sham of what Washington has done in the so-called post-9/11 world.

With apologies to country music singer Darryl Worley, no, we have not forgotten. If only we could.

Obama's War of Choice

So now Barack Obama has joined the presidential wars club.

By engaging militarily in Libya without even the veneer of congressional authorization, Ohio representative Dennis Kucinich suggested that the president's actions are "an impeachable offense." He's been derided by members of his own party, but Kucinich is right. If unconstitutionally sending the U.S. military to intervene in another nation's civil war is not an impeachable offense then nothing is.

While there have been no declarations of war since World War II, presidents have routinely circumvented the Constitution's clearly stated clause that only Congress can declare war by calling their decisions a "police action" or getting a watered-down resolution. There is some debate concerning whether the president may order military action in an immediate emergency and then call Congress once the emergency stage has passed. But what's happening in Libya in no way resembles an emergency that requires the president to act unilaterally and without constitutional authority. Instead, the former professor of constitutional law has allowed the UN Security Council resolution to serve as the supreme law of the land.

But the UN Security Council resolution only authorizes that there may be "all necessary measures" to "protect Libyan citizens." If the Authorization for Use of Military Force legislation of 2001 was a blank check for President Bush, then what is this? Just what does "all necessary measures" to "protect Libyan citizens" mean?

Now that Obama has plunged the United States into this civil war, what are our objectives in protecting Libyan citizens?

By intervening in the first place, Obama has assured that the only possible outcome of this conflict means Gaddafi is dethroned. By entering on the side of the rebels, Obama has staked his claim. To offer limited assistance and then pull away is to condemn the rebels to the mercy of Gaddafi.

Why intervene on the side of the rebels unless it is to see them to victory? And if we take them across the finish line, how then does the new government in a fragile, fractious country operate unless it is propped up? What of Gaddafi's fighters? As students of history should know, the losers in a civil war do not often lay down all their weapons and celebrate the peace when the war is declared "over."

So why intervene in the first place? Is it because the UN said it was okay? If so, Obama has done nothing less than cede American sovereignty.

What vital American national interests are involved in who rules a cobbled-together kingdom of the northern Sahara?

Consider this: Moammar Gaddafi seized power over 40 years ago. Why is it that only now he is such a menace to American national interests that he must be confronted? It's been over 22 years since Gaddafi's only successful aggression against the United States, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Although 190 Americans died that day there was no military action taken against the "Mad Dog of the Middle East." If no previous president from Reagan to George W. Bush felt the mass murder of American civilians was worth retaliating against Gaddafi, why does protecting the lives of Libyan citizens merit it now?

As the Arab League bails out it becomes increasingly clear that it will only be the United States policing this conflict. Great Britain and France may have led the initial charge to act but countries facing insolvency are not long for occupations.

To invoke General Petraeus in 2003, how does this end?

By involving the United States, Obama makes this his war, regardless of whether Hillary or Samantha Power bullied him into it. If he calls off the whole shebang, he will have made himself into a fool by first declaring "Gaddafi must go," doing nothing for two weeks before reluctantly inserting American firepower, and ultimately leaving Libya with Gaddafi still in power having outlasted the strongest military on the planet with his third-rate army.

So now President Obama has taken us to war. He has taken us to war in a country where no national interests are at stake and he did so without the slightest acknowledgement from Congress. His actions have left the door open for more naked acts of aggression in the future.

Now is as good a time as any for that neglected congress to grow a backbone, reclaim their constitutional authority to declare war and finally put a stop to these presidential wars.

It's time for Speaker Boehner to make a real stand and assert one of his chamber's remaining power: The power to impeach the president for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Know Nothing Party

How things have changed in two short years.*

In November 2008 we were told conservatism was dead and the Republican Party was on its way to Whig status. Ragin' Cajun James Carville boastfully predicted 40 years of Democratic governance.

Maybe not.

Now conservatism is in an ascendancy. The Republicans are back and have learned that the reason they were fired in the first place was because of all that spending. Now that Republicans are back in the House, they can get to work on repealing Obamacare, privatizing Social Security, and ending the welfare state.

Maybe not.

For all the chatter, there isn't anything even broadly revolutionary about this election. There might be a few upsets and a few unapproved candidates might survive running the gauntlet, but this Republican Congress will likely resemble the ones that disappointed from 1994-2006.

The mistake made by rose-spectacled Republicans comes in thinking that a change of majority parties makes much of a difference beyond the name plates and seating arrangements.

Time magazine just put "Party Crashers" Rand Paul, Christine O'Donnell, Marco Rubio, and Meg Whitman on its election issue cover. That Bush Republican Marco Rubio and former eBay CEO and billionaire Meg Whitman are somehow considered "a new breed of Republicans" tells us enough about what is considered "Tea Party" these days.

Too much buzzkill?

The first reason for skepticism is that there has not been a serious philosophical shift, nay even a debate within the GOP.

One might argue that support for the bank bailouts or President Obama's stimulus became a litmus test since it resulted in the scalp of Bob Bennett and the defection of Arlen Specter. But that anyone can support the promotion to Speaker of the House for bailout leader John Boehner suggests that the party leadership won't have to pay for their sins.

The one issue that got Republicans kicked out in the first place, foreign policy and the disastrous experiments in Middle Eastern nation-building, has been a non-issue in this election cycle.

Republicans have convinced themselves and probably convinced a lot of voters that the real reason they got booted was because they spent too much. The party's recent emphasis on economic issues would be a step in the right direction if it was rooted in anything besides partisanship. Like the kid who got spanked for sticking his hand in the cookie jar, these Republicans are only sorry they got caught.

Secondly, there is nothing in this election to suggest confidence in Republicans -- only that Democrats failed and voters had nowhere else to turn.

Republican victories this year are also consistent with historical precedent. In America's duopoly, the ruling party traditionally loses big in the first midterm. One party fails and the other one gets their chance to do . . . something.

In 1954, during Dwight Eisenhower's first term as president and the first such Republican in 20 years, the GOP lost 18 seats in the House. Reagan's Republicans got routed in 1982 while the economy was still sour. Bill Clinton had large majorities in Congress in 1994 before losing a whopping 54 seats. With the memory of 9/11 still fresh, George W. Bush's GOP temporarily broke the trend by adding 8 seats at midterm.

Since the Republicans have gone into exile, there has been no urgency to address issues. Republican identity for the past two years has been wrapped up in opposition to the Democratic president. It's not because he's black. It's because he's a Democrat.

The new Republican ascendance has nothing to do with a re-birth of conservatism or faith in the GOP and everything to do with a Democratic ruling majority that didn't delivery what it promised despite overwhelming majorities.

The Republicans' position as the majority party in Congress doesn't preclude them from relinquishing their title as the Party of No. They can still oppose President Obama at every turn for the next two years but that won't mean they stand for anything.

The Republican Party doesn't need to be restored to power. It needs some fresh ideas and new leaders.

And if Barack Obama can defy conventional wisdom and make a Clintonian move to the Center, who will he and the rest of us have to thank for providing no genuine alternative?

War Party and Tea

With the surprise retirement of Evan Bayh, widely assumed to be a shoo-in for reelection, Republicans can lick their chops some more about the electoral gains they are sure to make this fall.

Perhaps the Tea Party pressure is paying off. Maybe enough of those evil Democrats are getting the picture that their big government machinations are history and a renewed, revitalized, and reformed Republican Party is poised to set the ship aright by following the Constitution and restoring the republic to the one bequeathed to us by the founding fathers.

Probably not.

Like Obama, the Republicans are misreading the early election returns.

In 2006 and 2008, Americans sick of the Republicans, their ill-conceived wars, and a miserable economy, threw the GOP and their “permanent majority” out. 2008 was a year where the Republicans were so despised that Democrats could have literally nominated a yellow dog and still won the presidency. Not sensing this, Obama and the Democrats introduced to America an agenda that envisioned a health care plan that would inevitably lead to a government take-over of the industry.

Republicans have responded by defeating Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, and of all places, Massachusetts.

So how are they misreading the election results?

They are taking these early Democratic defeats to mean that, even though the Republicans have offered no agenda of change, the American people must want back the good old days of the early 2000s of the ambiguous “War on Terror” and endless deficit spending.

No sooner had Scott Brown embarrassed his daughters on national television did National Review’s Andrew McCarthy assure us that it was the War on Terror that really motivated people to get out there by praising how:

“Scott Brown went out and made the case for enhanced interrogation, for denying terrorists the rights of criminal defendants, for detaining them without trial, and for trying them by military commission. It worked. It will work for other candidates willing to get out of their Beltway bubbles . . . .

“He said the United States needs to stop apologizing for defending itself. And he won going away, in the bluest of blue states.”

What McCarthy means by “defending itself,” is keeping the same Bush foreign policy that Americans have already repudiated.

This also shows how, despite all the good rhetoric about the Constitution, limited government, and reduced spending at home, all of that takes a back seat to the ubiquitous “War on Terror” and makes the so-called Tea Parties a farce.

Just look at the reception given to Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul.

Paul, who has consistently led in Kentucky polls for at least four months, is continually vilified by his party and their media henchmen for a variety of bizarre reasons. He’s kooky. He’s pro-abortion (untrue). He’s a marijuana advocate (a dramatic distortion). But the most telling criticism is that Rand Paul is somehow weak on military matters and wants to surrender the “War on Terror.”

To make that argument ignores the fact that Paul’s first campaign commercial declared that he will “stop travel visas from terrorist nations” and “keep prisoners off U.S. soil,” as well as supporting military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay. On his website, he has expressed his support for a declaration of war on Afghanistan. He also wrangled the endorsement of war empress Sarah Palin. To the chagrin of all the little Churchills with laptops, Rand Paul is not Neville Chamberlain.

But it was Jeanette Pryor of Newsrealblog that summed up the supremacy of war when she said this regarding Sarah Palin’s endorsement:

"The logical conclusion of this endorsement is that Palin considers America’s global defense of freedom, national defense, the War on Terror, the defeat of Radical Islam, and the support of Israel and our allies, to be less important than 'some' domestic policy issues."

Pryor says plainly that not only are the wars more important than our domestics, but Israel is too. Are we for America first or are we not? Or as The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison noted about the reaction to Palin’s endorsement, she “has erred because she forgot that national security is the one area where conservatives cannot meaningfully disagree and still be accepted.”

During the Bush administration, everything took a backseat to the wars. Spending skyrocketed. The Roe v. Wade atrocity remained firmly in place. Border security was abandoned. The federal government sunk its claws deeper into American education. Executive power increased. But the wars, well, that’s what really mattered.

These GOP sycophants have already demonstrated that once the Republicans are back in power, the latter aim to do everything exactly the same once again. And the former aim to continue their bidding.

From the party that has had no ideas for fixing the problems they helped cause this should be no surprise.

An Opportunity only Conservatives Can Miss

Only a year into the Obama presidency and Republicans are poised to make gains in 2010. This is heartening news for a party that was pronounced dead only a year ago.

With President Obama’s poll numbers slipping, 30-year Senator Chris Dodd choosing retirement over electoral humiliation and with the Tea Party Movement not going away, the Republicans smell enough blood in the water to already entertain dreams of regaining the majority. Maybe 2009 wasn’t so awful for the GOP after all.

For all of the rhetorical improvements Republicans have made in the wilderness, the party is proving that they can still take conservatives for another wild ride.

The Tea Parties, after Obama’s inauguration, were probably the biggest force in American politics last year.

Demonstrations on Tax Day were passionate, very well attended, and Tea Partiers made perpetual turn-coat Arlen Specter sweat through more than just the heat during the August recess. Talk of constitutional fidelity is up and tolerance for big government is down.

With such a force as the Tea Parties even outpolling the favorability of Republicans, limited government conservatives might finally have reason to hope for their cause. Since the Tea Parties could be such a force, maybe the Republicans can be trusted this time to responsibly administer the levers of power and actually cut spending, take their noses out of Americans’ private lives and balance the budget.

Then came the Christmas bomber.

All the hope for reducing spending and cutting government may still be lost.

While the vigor and passion exerted against Obama’s intrusive administration is laudable, the conservatives who make up the Tea Party Movement still have another hurdle to climb for theirs to be a serious limited government movement.

The deficit will not be reduced, the dollar will not be strengthened, and tax increases will not become an afterthought if ObamaCare is the only big government swindle that is eliminated. The limited government patriots of the Tea Parties will do only half their job if the issue of military spending is ignored. And that is why the Christmas bomber may be secretly celebrated by a Republican Party establishment that would not think twice about pulling another heist on their limited government conservatives.

If the Republican Party can continue justifying excessive military spending once they are back in power, the bait will be in for them to continue the domestic spending that made George W. Bush the LBJ of the Republicans.

That’s why this may be the perfect opportunity for conservatives to discover that fulfilling their mission of limiting government is incomplete unless military spending is addressed.

It’s been common among conservatives, during and since the Cold War, that any suggestion of reducing spending on the military is tantamount to surrender or appeasement of the enemy. But conservatives don’t believe this way about all the other types of government spending.

When a bleeding heart liberal pleas that there needs to be more money allocated for education, health care or poverty reduction, rank-and-file conservatives have usually responded that the more money that gets applied to those programs, the worse the problem gets. American children haven’t gotten smarter because money was given to them by the federal government and health care costs have simply increased as the government has involved itself. The same skepticism needs to apply to defense spending.

Even with President Obama allegedly “gutting our military,” the U.S. still spends as much on defense than the rest of the world combined. Should we ever ask ourselves how the rest of the world expects to be safe when they don’t spend nearly as much as we do? Is it possible for us to get by with less?

This also highlights the gravest contradiction in modern American conservatism. The mantra has always been to cut spending and cut taxes but there can be no contemplation of limiting the spending that could be given to the military.

This is a time to ask whether it’s in the national security interests of the U.S. to have troops in 130 countries of the world.

This is a time to ask whether the government, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, has exploited the patriotism of Americans by scaring them into acquiescing to their imperial ambitions.

This is a time to ask whether the maxim that more spending does not guarantee better results should also be applied to the military, a government institution.

This is a time to ask whether the network of terrorists responsible for 9/11, now down to perhaps 100, is worth hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and perhaps Pakistan or Yemen, or whether there might be a more fiscally prudent solution.

This is the challenge conservatives of the Tea Parties must overcome to retake their party.

Compassionate Conservatism Revisited?

As gubernatorial races approach in New Jersey and Virginia, Republicans are rubbing their hands in anticipation of the beginning of a comeback. Delivering one or both of the governorships into GOP hands may be an early sign that Americans are not receptive to the change of Barack Obama’s status quo-ism.

This prospect can be very enticing. There is some speculation that Sarah Palin might run for office again. Her endorsement of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in New York’s 23rd district may make the difference in the 2009 special election. So too might Arlen Specter be sent packing and Chris “Countrywide” Dodd might finally pay for that sweetheart mortgage.

While extricating those suits from their seats might be attractive, one has to wonder what the Republicans have to offer the country other than the “R”’s beside their names.

One potential sleeper contest in 2010 is the Florida senate race. Charlie Crist, global warming-monger and stimulus money beggar, has announced that he will not seek another term as governor so he can run for the senate seat vacated by Mel Martinez. Crist is the favorite in both the primary and the general election, but he faces a challenge from a former underling, one-time Florida Speaker of the House Marco Rubio.

Rubio’s positives make him popular among the grassroots activists. He is a Fair Taxer, supporting a national sales tax instead of the income tax, a solution that fellow anti-IRSites like myself fear might only rearrange a problem instead of solving it. He favors a balanced budget amendment, a position sure to make conservatives swoon in reaction to President Obama’s ridiculous spending habits.

The benefit of Marco Rubio is that he is of Cuban ancestry. The media and haughty liberals never shirk an opportunity to remind the GOP that they are the “Old White Guy Party.” Rubio’s Hispanic heritage automatically catapults him to the front of the line of Republican examples of diversity where he can sit with Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, and Bobby Jindal.

National Review placed the 38-year-old on the cover of its September 7 issue claiming “Yes, He Can” and that the party’s conservative activists need to get behind this “true conservative.”

Whether young Rubio is a “true conservative” or not is a sub question to the earlier one of what the Republicans have to offer: What does a “true conservative” have to offer during the Obama regnancy? What is “conservative” in the post-Bush era?

In a National Review Online interview with the insurgent, Rubio “counts former Gov. Jeb Bush as one of his most important political mentors” and the former governor has since endorsed Rubio as has son, Jeb Jr.

Not one to beat a dead elephant, but conservatives ought to ask themselves one of these days, What exactly has the Bush family done for conservative causes? Break promises not to raise taxes? Take turns invading Iraq? Spent like there was no tomorrow and completely nullifying any good tax cuts could do? Of course Jeb is his own man, but there are many sins of the father and brother for which he must atone.

One of the other GOP veterans who has hitched himself to the Rubio wagon is Mike Huckabee, who is reciprocating the endorsement Rubio made for him in 2008. When asked why he supported Huckabee, who had difficulty attracting much support outside single issue social conservatives, Rubio said,

“Two things I like about Mike Huckabee: One was his support of the Fair Tax . . . Second, I thought that of all the candidates, he did the best job of connecting how the people’s social and moral well-being cannot be separated from their economic well-being.” (emphasis mine)

“the people’s social and moral well-being cannot be separated from their economic well-being.”

Translation: excessive domestic spending known during the Bush years as Compassionate Conservatism.

Toeing both sides of a fine line to appease immigration restrictionists in the party as well as the open borders crowd, Rubio concedes that “On immigration, [Retiring Republican Senator Mel Martinez] voted for a package I probably would not have voted for . . .” (emphasis mine)

Rubio also chooses to toe both sides when it comes to the biggest fiasco of the generation, the Iraq War. Here he takes Jonah Goldberg’s Orwellian position on Iraq: it was a mistake but it was not wrong:

“Obviously, the Iraq War has had the chilling effect of making us question all intelligence findings now. . . . I think that there is some credence, in hindsight, to the notion that the real battlefield was in Afghanistan all along. . . .

“But understand at the same time, we were being told that Iraq was on the verge of gaining a nuclear capability. . . . So it’s impossible to sit here and give a fair analysis in hindsight.”

Translation: OK, maybe the Iraq War wasn’t such a great idea after all. Maybe. But who are we to say it was a mistake? It was just a war. No reason to worry about responsibility for it.

So for all the talk about the Republican Party getting its act together and finally getting back to its conservative principles, if it ever really had them, the "conservatism" during the Obama dispensation looks eerily similar to the one during the days of the Bush regime.

Mushy immigration rhetoric, government taking an active role in the people’s “well-being” and a persistent refusal to criticize GOP foreign policy, Rubio is probably better than Charlie Crist, but might we entertain the possibility that there might be a better potential standard-bearer?

Sarah, the Country Club Republican?

After an interview with Politico, Ron Paul is being ripped for accusing the soon-to-be former Alaska governor of being aligned with the northeastern, fat cat snobs who make up the establishment of the Republican Party.

To the grassroots Palinistas, this is a charge of treason.

Governor Palin has certainly been the recipient of some awful treatment from establishment types. These folks would have been fine with Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge on last year’s vice presidential slot, as they certainly would not have rocked the boat.

But people who fixate on the country club comment are on the wrong topic. Ron Paul did not call Palin herself a “Country Club Republican,” but regarded her followers as “more establishment, conventional, Country-Club type Republicans.”

At first, this does look like a statement at least a little divorced from reality. Surely all those hockey moms and pro-life demonstrators can’t be part of the dreaded establishment. That’s because they’re not. They are the poor folks who have been duped by the establishment into thinking that a Palin presidency would immediately benefit them. If the Palin supporters who had the influence to push the governor into the vice presidential slot are the ones we’re counting, then maybe Dr. Paul isn’t so crazy after all. He continues:

“I wonder whether she’s engaging 15-20 year olds . . . Because she doesn’t talk about the Federal Reserve. . . . She doesn’t talk too much about personal liberties, civil liberties, getting rid of drug laws, attacking the war on drugs, punishing people who torture.”

I might also add that after her rousing, war-centric convention speech last fall, coupled with an Israeli flag in her governor’s office, Sarah Palin, while exceptional at throwing red meat to the eager Republican base, at the least, does a mean impersonation an establishment lackey.

But this highlights the continuing rift in the Republicans, and if nothing else, their refusal to acknowledge the main cause for their woes: Iraq and the possibility (inevitability?) of even more foreign wars. And when the American Enterprise Institute and The Weekly Standard, a think tank and a magazine where the Iraq war germinated, think of Sarah Palin as a “project,” one conjures up memories of Texas Governor George W. Bush’s rhetoric of “no nation-building” being replaced with a “crusade to end tyranny.”

So is it possible that the appeal of Sarah Palin for the executive branch can be an odd combination of establishment appeal and grassroots rhetoric?

As I wrote recently, I’m not a Palin-aholic, but I am inclined to like her and I’ve said before that I want to like her. When I began reading about her last year, I rather liked what I learned: Lived by a pro-life creed that put other Republicans to shame, publicly questioned the “Surge” in Iraq and the lack of an exit strategy, and her husband had membership in the Alaskan Independence Party. This didn’t exactly scream George W. Bush reborn. But that someone who seemed to possess these fine qualities would hitch her wagon to John McCain was a bit odd. Perhaps it was telling.

Ask a Palin supporter what they like about her. Chances are great that what you will find is someone caught up in her personality. Yes, the story is inspiring, raising a big family while maintaining a career, and while that’s admirable, that’s not enough for me to throw support. “She’s a fighter” or “she’s a maverick” or “she’s one of us,” do not constitute solid arguments. Chances are also great that many of these same people are revolted by the cult of personality that still very much surrounds the current commander-in-chief. And a cult of personality around Palin is exactly what will be exploited by a Republican establishment that has no qualms about returning to the days of Bush.

It is this very cult of personality that makes me yet more wary if Sarah Palin chooses to re-enter elective politics (although I don’t see how). She clearly has a very devoted band of followers (I’m not sure, but I wonder if Palin had been caught in an affair like Mark Sanford, whether her supporters would have been screaming “Resign!”, not that I am making the charge) who are ready to fight for their beloved figure and what the GOP needs right now is a figure for their masses to unite around, even if it’s someone who seemingly threw her electability out the window with her resignation.

This is worthy of wariness because until very recently, George W. Bush possessed a cult-like following and one could say he still does when it comes to matters of war and the military. Because of that, President Bush got away with a lot of patently un-conservative behavior because his base would never question him. And they didn’t. So why would a base, even more in love with Palin, act any differently?

And like Bush, should Sarah Palin ever assume the presidency, she would enter with little background in foreign policy. But just as Governor Bush once sounded like a cautious interventionist, Governor Palin could just as easily be hoodwinked into the Forever War camp as well – in fact, it appears the neocons’ project worked. How else might someone who questioned the 2007 troop surge now sound like the editorial board of The Weekly Standard? And just for the record, didn’t she support McCain’s vote for TARP and his decision to bailout the banks?

Perhaps Sarah Palin is not exactly a “Country Club Republican” herself, but what she did in Alaska did little to truly unhinge the state’s establishment. That Palin is even still discussed as a presidential contender should signal to us that she is acceptable to the establishment. This is what her ardent supporters should be paying attention to. The establishment snobs we often disdain might not have such a problem with her after all. That can be because they might have already broken her and see her as the vessel that George W. Bush was: someone who can be manipulated and molded into someone quite different from the person we first saw.

Let us hope that Sarah Palin sticks to her pledge to effect positive change outside of government because she bears many of the markings that made the Bush administration possible.

And that is no good news at all.

The Obama Girl

When I first heard of Sonia Sotomayor, it was a few weeks before President Obama nominated her to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was when that infamous video of her first surfaced where she uttered, “The Court of Appeals is where policy is made. . . . I know I should never say that because we don’t ‘make law,’ I know.” As bothersome as that comment was, which she shamelessly tried to cover up, the laughter that it elicited is what said more to me. As I explained in my letter to the local paper, that much probably tells us what Sonia Sotomayor thinks of the Constitution: she disregards the court’s call to interpret the law, attempts to cover up the gaffe with air quotes, and then laughs. How funny.

With this as my initial introduction, I was prepared to utterly detest Judge Sotomayor. Just imagine what sort of judicial activist she must be if she’s this upfront about it. In the end, she appears to have little that resembles a judicial philosophy and despite her gaffes and lack of judgment, it will be all of her personal factors that will make it utterly impossible for the Republicans to mount a serious offensive.

Take, for example, the quote that has easily garnered the most attention: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Oops.

In what would have ended the career of any white man, the perception that Republicans are inherently racist will likely render this Biden moment moot.

Regardless, the administration and its media lackeys wasted no time in playing the “out of context” card. You need to know the whole context to understand what she really meant, they bellowed. As Steel Phoenix pointed out, the context makes the quote even worse. Instead of making an off-the-cuff remark (off-the-cuff, yet somehow scripted), she has not only uttered that statement more than once, but the time in question (2001 at Berkeley) was intended for publication in the La Raza (The Race) Law Review. I’m unfamiliar with the La Raza Law Review, but if it’s in any way affiliated with the National Council on La Raza, it can only be described as anti-white and anti-American and encourages a Reconquista of the American Southwest.

So if this is true and La Raza Law Review is that La Raza, then she was at best pandering to Hispanics, and at worst giving aid and comfort to a group that is openly treasonous. Either way, that is a serious lack of judgment and ethics unbecoming of a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Not to mention the notion that her background would help her produce better decisions than say, some white guy.

Now for some of the other issues that are under the radar.

Surprisingly, Judge Sotomayor has a rather vague record on abortion. This is surprising only because the person who nominated her promised Planned Parenthood that Roe v. Wade was going to remain sacrosanct. That makes it difficult to believe that she could possibly be pro-life. But my pro-life brethren needn’t really fret over this issue. If she does turn out to be even the most unshakable of Roe supporters, she is replacing David Souter, not Clarence Thomas. The status quo will remain on this issue.

She has an interesting record on the Second Amendment. Appearing to understand what the amendment means, Sotomayor ruled in Maloney v. Cuomo that the Second Amendment does not pertain to state and local governments. She ruled correctly that the Second Amendment restricts (or is supposed to restrict) the U.S. Congress from infringing on Americans’ right to own a gun. But her ruling indicated that those state and local governments do have the right to restrict people from owning guns. It sounds like she swung both ways on that one: one level of government has the right to take away your right to own a gun, but another patently does not. The point is, you do have the right to own a gun and no government can take it away. Her ruling indicates that it is not a right.

An issue that has not been mentioned among conservatives looking to oppose the nomination is the issue of executive power. Republican appointees John Roberts and Sam Alito and William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor before them backed the Bush administration’s power grabs rather consistently.

It was disappointing for me that conservatives by and large looked the other way or bought the line that the executive needed additional powers to wage war other than the ones prescribed in the Constitution. How short-sighted was that view? Because George W. Bush exercised extraordinary powers, Barack Obama does too, and only looks to increase them. Now many of those same Bush supporters are aghast that President Obama has such penetrating power. I’m confused as to why it’s so surprising: Bush didn’t take his extraconstitutional power back to Crawford with him. It stayed in Washington ready to be used by the next emperor regardless of whether it was Grampsy or The Chosen One.

So what does Sonia Sotomayor feel about increasing executive power? It’s hard to say. Lewis McCrary of The American Conservative had trouble finding rulings on it. But if we recall her comment about the courts making policy, it’s not hard to imagine she would support additional unconstitutional power grabs that would benefit the man who gave her her new job. As President Obama has assumed more powers over the affairs of the country, how she rules on this matter is what should most concern conservatives.

People are having difficulty finding rulings that would indicate a judicial philosophy that directs Sotomayor. With no clear philosophy, that probably points to judicial activism and it will additionally make it even harder for Republicans to oppose her. That will leave Republicans with little else but to harp on the wise Latina (if they dare) and judicial activism comments, which in and of themselves will get them nowhere.

Plus Obama and his pick have the added advantage that her appointment to the federal district court was from President George H. W. Bush. Republicans won’t be able to claim that she’s just another Democratic operative and political appointee. Republicans with the seniority of Mitch McConnell have the votes to prove it. In this regard, President Obama can justifiably say, “Who are you to oppose Ms. Sotomayor now when you confirmed her in 1992?”

In a sense, it was politically golden for President Obama to pick Sonia Sotomayor. She’s Hispanic and a woman, two key Democratic demographics. Republicans are already branded as anti-Hispanic and anti-woman. They don’t need further stigmatization by harping on her wise Latina comment, so expect them to walk on eggshells. And she has a slippery (some might say sloppy) judicial record, even upsetting some liberals, which makes it hard to definitively nail her down.

All the president needs is for one of the Maine Republicans to cross the aisle to confirm a sister.

As far as picking someone to make it onto the high court, Barack Obama probably made the perfect nomination. Now whether she can reliably apply the law is another matter.

In other words, don't expect Sonia Sotomayor to get borked.

(H/T: Steel Phoenix)

The Lawless Right

Well, that’s what it boils down to, anyway. The arguments made by those on the Right regarding the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding suggests as much and it exposes the moral bankruptcy of what currently constitutes today’s mainstream American Right.

Along with this discussion have been repeated invocations of President Harry Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to end the war in the Pacific. The argument reads: since Japan would never surrender before every man, woman, and child were exhausted to defend the empire, the atomic bombs HAD to be used in order to hasten their surrender. That, of course, ignores the simple fact that even though two atomic bombs were detonated, the Japanese did not fight to every last man, woman, or child.

What this whole discussion of “extraordinary tactics,” be it waterboarding or dropping atomic bombs, reveals is that those who populate the Right, time and again, abandon their principles and the rule of law for pragmatism.

The most compelling argument in favor of waterboarding is that it saves lives. That certainly seems justifiable if waterboarding a suspect means they reveal pivotal information about an impending terror attack.

But what if a waterboarded suspect gives false information because the action being engaged in is indeed torture and he says whatever is necessary to make the pain stop? If that is the case, is waterboarding anything other than torture or sadism?

And what does waterboarding say of us, a country that prosecuted the Japanese for doing the same thing in World War II? Does it say that activities we label “torture” are only torture when it is committed by other regimes? Answering “yes” to that question makes an activity like waterboarding an ethically neutral practice – its morality is determined by who commits it. Japanese waterboarding: evil and a war crime. American waterboarding: good and definitely not torture.

What is truly amazing is the apoplexy of those on the Right regarding the retraction of waterboarding as a counterterrorism measure.

We regularly hear about how waterboarding has indeed saved American lives because the frequently-waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “the mastermind of 9/11,” revealed that there was another terrorist attack slated for the West Coast. There does appear to have been another attack planned for the West Coast, but the great ignored fact is that it was called off by Osama bin Laden himself before 9/11. So how did waterboarding save American lives if the plot he exposed in 2002 was long-before canceled?

But this illusion marches on and the Right, and even a few on the Left, perpetuate that waterboarding is not torture, it worked, and we should continue it.

It is shrouded under the cover of “National Security,” and we can see how those on the Right readily throw away their convictions in favor of expediency.

The argument regularly heard from those waterboard supporters is that it works and if it meant protecting the American people from a terrorist attack, then we should have no problem pouring some water up a terrorist’s nose for 30 seconds.

The worst part is this excuse-making on the Right. How many times in the past couple of weeks have we heard the talking heads saying that “Well, those people cut off heads, we just pour some water up their noses.”

It is probably time to point out that “At least we’re not as bad as them” is not a real argument based on reason or fact. Neither is “Okay, so we waterboarded a guy a whole bunch of times, but it was never for more than 30 seconds!” And neither is “Well, we haven’t done it since 2003” or “It’s not torture, but even if it was, it was only on 3 people and they were terrorists anyway, so it doesn’t count.” Or “Yes, we did sign the Geneva Convention and the terrorists didn’t, so that technically means we don’t have to accord them the rights under it. That means we can torture!”

All of this makes the argument in favor of waterboarding not really about intelligence gathering but revenge. It’s like saying “Okay, maybe waterboarding really is torture, but come on, these people are terrorists. It shouldn’t matter whether waterboarding is against the law or not. They don’t abide by the rules, so we won’t.”

This defense of waterboarding on the Right has gotten so twisted that NOT supporting waterboarding is “disgusting.”

Another much-regurgitated argument was the rhetorical question posed to anyone who dared to question the wisdom of waterboarding: What if we have a suspect who has knowledge of an impending attack and won’t talk unless we waterboard? Or “President Obama, what if, God forbid, your little girls were kidnapped by terrorists and they wouldn’t tell you where they were? Would you waterboard then?”

Well, aside from the obvious fact that that second situation is far-fetched to the point of absurdity, let’s alter that second argument into something just a little more realistic.

Instead of terrorists doing the kidnapping, let’s say your family has been kidnapped by one person. What if they refused to give back your family, even for ransom? Would you murder the kidnapper to save your family? If you did, would you expect to be prosecuted by the law? Is it not still murder if it’s done to a villain? Is torture not actually torture if we say it’s for good purposes?

At best, what the Right is advocating is a disregard of the law because we don’t like it and, at worst, showing that values are expendable.

An example of this could be found on Glenn Beck’s television program on Friday, May 1, 2009. With a live studio audience, Mr. Beck, who has a strong independent streak, rejected the notion that waterboarding is a crime. For those familiar with Glenn Beck either on television or radio, he frequently excoriates politicians who deliberately ignore the Constitution. Yet this time, when the argument gets framed into matters of national security and the hypothetical ticking time bomb, waterboarding is absolutely necessary. In an exchange with libertarian justice Andrew Napolitano, Mr. Beck questions whether the Constitution is a “suicide pact” because it does not allow for presidents to waterboard.

Notice how easily a usually strong-willed conservative abandons the Constitution for the hypothetical ticking time bomb. In the most far-fetched scenario in world history, civilizational annihilation, the Constitution HAS to be dropped, even in the more hypothetical of situations. Like deficits, I guess laws don’t matter either.

Somehow, I conjecture that much of the rage roaring on the Right has little to do with actually combating terrorism or keeping Americans safe.

I make this estimation because one of the main defenses is that waterboarding has not been used since 2003. Why is that? If waterboarding is the only way we have been able to thwart impending terrorist attacks, does that mean we haven't been safe since 2003? Surely Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's knowledge of contemporary terrorist attacks has been exhausted. Could it really be a coincidence that 2003 was the year that waterboarding officially ended and the invasion of Iraq began?

What about the testimony of Major Paul Burney, who revealed that much of the time spent waterboarding was to find a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq? The possibility that this is true might just unveil the real reason why our country waterboarded: to better justify the invasion of an innocent country.

Since in most cases conservatives defended nearly everything George W. Bush did, we may begin to see why waterboarding is sacrosanct on the Right. Like the liberal mainstream media that have invested heavily in Barack Obama, conservatives have put a major investment in the legacy of President Bush. Any condemnation (or prosecution) of what he did in office is a condemnation of the Right that gave him perpetual cover.

Conservatism thus far in the 21st Century is not concerned with the rule of law or tradition. It is primarily concerned with making Republicans, and especially George W. Bush, look good. Doing so means that conservatives have to ignore the law. And they are.

Dangerous Torture

The big news last weekend, other than President Obama's (gasp!) handshake with Hugo Chavez, was that the previously-classified "torture memos" were irresponsibly declassified, revealing state secrets, and forfeiting pivotal information in the long war against "Islamofascism."

No sooner were the memos made public did President Bush's remaining supporters on talk radio and Fox News jump to the microphone in a race to be the first to claim that President Obama was playing politics with America's security. Sean Hannity called it "stupid." Rush Limbaugh called the president "naieve." Bill O'Reilly doesn't want to use guidelines found in the army field manual, while in the same conversation, Karl Rove called the action "lunacy" and "a psychological victory for the terrorists."

All of these outrages reveal the twisted logic that suggests that "enhanced interrogation techniques" actually make the country safer.

As tempting as this view is, it all acts on an assumption that waterboarding, the most controversial of the techniques, saves lives. Apparently saying "Waterboarding isn't torture" enough times makes it true (or deciding that anything said because of waterboarding makes it true as well). Or saying "But waterboarding worked!" enough times, even if it might be a little morally questionable, makes it right. If Machiavelli would have approved, then I guess that's all that matters.

We routinely hear that these techniques kept America safe. After 9/11, we hear, we couldn't take any chances. After 9/11, the government didn't know what to do so they used waterboarding to get to the bottom of the issue and try to prevent another attack. Let's examine that claim.

Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden had declared war on the United States (1996) for stationing soldiers on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia, supporting its corrupt regime, and offering unconditional support to the Jewish state at the expense of the Palestinians.

In 2000, the naval destroyer USS Cole was targeted for bombing by bin Laden. Conservatives, especially since 9/11, have routinely pointed to the bombing of the Cole as evidence of Bill Clinton's negligence concerning the terrorist threat. In this case, they are right. And since they are right, it undermines the claim that torture or waterboarding works and is necessary in the "Global War on Terror."

This shows that the terrorist threat was bubbling just beneath the surface and that the U.S. government could have begun taking action against terrorists because they were showing themselves to be a threat to the U.S., or at least making the U.S. a target. And put this on top of the fact that the government already knew bin Laden was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Surely someone could have connected the dots: the Cole, the 1993 bombing, and a declaration, and figured out that something was brewing. For people who were paying attention to U.S. actions around the world, the horrors of 9/11 were not an earth-shattering or earth-changing event, but a predictable event.

So, we should have known that an event like 9/11 was coming. It could have been figured out by following world news through a major national newspaper or reading on the internet. It would not take waterboarding someone to figure out that the country was due for blowback from its foreign policies.

Also consider this: the media habitually tell the American people that the only people who participate in these horrific acts of terror are religious fanatics who desire to die for their faith. Events like 9/11 give credence to this view. So if part of being a terrorist means dying for the cause, why would they reveal anything under waterboarding or torture? Dying is the goal, isn't it? Why would they bother telling anything even if they knew anything if dying is the goal?

I now feel compelled to ask waterboarding defenders this: What did waterboarding 2 people, one of them the supposed mastermind of 9/11, a total of 266 times tell us about the terrorist attacks that curious internet users could not have found out for themselves?

What this boils down to is that torture or "enhanced interrogation" does nothing to make America inherently safer. The real fear that I have regarding these memos is not that by revealing their contents, they make America less safe because terrorists will be able to train for waterboarding. No, the real fear I have is that the contents of these memos will make America less safe because they can be used as a recruiting tool for the terrorists.

Just as the invasion of Iraq fueled terrorist recruiting because it was viewed as the conquest and rape of an innocent Muslim country, these memos will say to the Muslim world "We tortured."

We can debate until Judgment Day whether waterboarding is torture or not but in the Muslim world, they see an imperial power incarcerating Muslims and torturing them. That creates a further incentive for people who might not be inclined to to join the jihad to do so. And that is why this matters.

Our country has made a mess for itself by not understanding our enemy. The waterboarding issue is just another incident of missing the point.

If we want to make the waterboarding issue moot, then we must make the impetus for terrorism moot as well and come home.

The Fed Did It

Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse, by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

Last fall the bank bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, and home foreclosure crisis all hit at virtually the same time creating a fiscal disaster for millions and a political disaster for the incumbent party, its president, and his potential successor. People panicked when John McCain, who had been picking up steam, validated his Republican primary assertion that he didn’t understand much about the economy, and anxious voters sitting on the fence flocked to the freshman senator from Illinois.

Talking heads filled the TV screens with each party hack pointing to their adversary, claiming that it was their party’s policies that set up the financial Armageddon. Democrats pointed to the Bush tax cuts and Republican deregulation policies while the GOP said it was the affirmative action-backed Community Reinvestment Act begun under Jimmy Carter and rejuvenated by Bill Clinton that was the real reason for the economic tsunami.

The Democrats claimed that it was all the banks’ fault for the housing crisis. It was because of President Bush’s deregulation of the market that caused banks to loan out money to people who could not pay it back. They used the crisis as the justification for economic regulation because laissez-faire economics, like everything else he touched, had obviously failed under George W. Bush. In fact, George W. Bush did true free marketeers no favors when he made his prime-time television address pleading for the bank bailout and readily conceded that he had to "chuck" his free market principles.

The speech was played perfectly by the Democrats who could point out that even President Bush could concede that his deregulation contributed to the problem. That, however, operates on the assumption that just because George W. Bush said something means it is true.

An alternative reading of recent history is made by historian and best-selling author Tom Woods of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the prominent libertarian think tank. In his concise, highly readable, but quickly assembled book, Dr. Woods points to an altogether different culprit, one that is neither the Republicans’ supposed deregulation nor the Democrats’ affirmative action feel-good policies.

The author asks, why would so many institutions, in different areas of the business world, suddenly collapse and look like total buffoons all at the same time? Perhaps the variable is something outside of them. Woods’ thesis is that the source of all our money problems is the Federal Reserve.

One of the most neglected components of American life, Woods argues that the actions of the Fed preclude us from having a genuinely free market. The Fed was brought into life to succeed the First and Second Banks of the United States by a legislative act in 1913. For nearly 100 years, the Fed has been a part of American life that has received virtually no scrutiny. Woods believes it is time to scrutinize.

The Federal Reserve, he says, keeps interest rates artificially low by continually injecting dollars into the money supply, creating the illusion that more saving has been done which can thus be used in long-term projects such as home construction. Woods (along with economists Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and F. A. Hayek) concludes that these conditions, manipulated by the Fed in an earlier epoch, also caused the Great Depression.

Woods address both sides of the political aisle and indicts both for their hand in the crisis. Woods digs into the history of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA), a piece of legislation supported by President Jimmy Carter designed to pressure banks into making home loans to people of all segments of society, regardless of their credit history. The act resurfaced during Bill Clinton’s administration and the spirit of the act was invoked by George W. Bush in his push for an "ownership society."

The CRA resulted with banks receiving threats of lawsuits which ultimately led to the lowering of their lending standards, and a symptom of the crisis becomes evident. A condemnatory passage of the Democrats, Woods relates the story of Clinton HUD secretary Andrew Cuomo patting himself on the back for winning a "discrimination" settlement against AccuBanc Mortgage that ended with the bank being forced to issue loans on an affirmative action basis, which the secretary knew full well would end in a higher number of defaults (20-21).

Far from a real laissez-faire capitalist, George W. Bush threw in his lot with the "home-owning for minorities" scheme that his Democratic predecessors conjured up. He regularly supported regulations, even if not in word, certainly in deed.

Woods unequivocally rejects regulation as the solution for this and any financial crisis. Similar to security restrictions after a terrorist attack, the regulations and restrictions imposed are designed to protect people from yesterday’s catastrophe. Regulations are, in short, counterproductive and miss the current and potentially future crisis.

The answer, Woods insists, is not regulation because it has already been tried and failed.

He points out that regulators are government employees, not business savvy men. Shortly before Enron imploded in 2001, the SEC checked them out and found things A-OK. As we know from the Enron debacle, it was insiders who really knew what was going on and figured it out, which, while certainly late in the game, was still faster than the government discovered it.

Another example of government regulation of the economy is the presence of insured commercial bank deposits. He writes, "Any 'deregulation' of the banking system that permits the banks to take greater risks while maintaining government (that is, tax payer) insurance of their deposits is not genuine deregulation from a free-market point of view," (46).

But all of these examples are really symptoms of the problem. While affirmative action legislation is bad and regulations are unfruitful and government pressure on banks is also bad, they would all go away if only the Federal Reserve was abolished. The Fed is the instrument that powers all of these poor economic activities. The Fed is the lender responsible for the money banks lend out to unqualified borrowers. The Fed is run by unelected men and truly accountable to no one. It prints paper money which, by virtue of no metal backing, can never be exchanged, and is literally, only paper.

A secondary aspect of Woods’ solution is to return to a gold standard monetary system. Since 1971 and the Bretton-Woods accord, the United States has been on fiat money, that is, money that is not backed by any metal, be it gold, silver, or anything else. Since the government never has to worry about people coming in and demanding gold or silver in exchange for their reserve notes, the people are stuck with them. And since there is nothing to restrain the government by way of the people regarding money, they are free to continue printing as much paper money as they want. This, Woods concludes, is what makes bailouts possible.

This, in fact, is one of Woods’ most compelling arguments. If money can truly be printed at will, and there is nothing people can do that would force government to spend responsibly, that makes bailouts not only possible, but likely. A currency that is based on an exchangeable metal is actually a restraint on government. If politicians have to worry about people coming in and demanding gold or silver for their paper money, they will think twice before spending beyond their means. Also, the very existence of a central bank feeds into the bailout mentality as the "lender of last resort," usually means it will ultimately get to fulfill that duty.

All of this supports the famed Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, a theory which won F. A Hayek the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. The theory states that whenever a central bank creates circumstances which create a false prosperity through the printing of money, which lowers interest rates, a bust will inevitably end the boom. This is precisely what happened in America. People who would have otherwise been considered unqualified for loans received loans. Woods says it is similar to a basketball team expanding the roster by two spots. Even though two more people get to be on the team, they would not have otherwise been considered qualified for the team.

The point is that reality eventually caught up with the housing bubble and caused the collapse. It was a predictable but inevitable event. The central bank can try to delay the bust but doing so only makes the bust worse, since there would be more time to manipulate the false sense of prosperity. According to this argument and logic, the Federal Reserve is the institution that made the housing bubble and bust possible.

The only downside of Meltdown is a common one among free market uber alles advocates. Woods writes about the free market as if all problems would instantly vanish without regulations and the central bank. While I cannot help but agree that the country’s financial situation would improve if we really enacted a laissez-faire economic where the government actually kept its hands off the economic system, the reader cannot help but notice the faith rhetoric that is inherent to the free market system.

Take a passage from page 65: "The market gradually weeds out business owners who do a poor job as stewards of capital and forecasters of consumer demand by punishing them with losses and, if their inefficiency persists, driving them out of business altogether. So why should businessmen, even those well established and who have passed the market test year after year, suddenly all make the same error?" Now simply replace "market" with "God" and the reader can get the sense that the free market is supposed to be infallible. If only the market was really free, then all the financial problems of this country would be resolved. One can almost see the biting satire of Stephen Colbert and his claims of Republican "Moneytheism." Yet, that is really the only shortcoming in Meltdown, one of interpretation and the fear of parody.

Now that the recession is in full swing, and by virtue of this book, we have an opportunity to confront the problem. Shall we continue to blame everyone on the other side and point to policies that have made themselves obsolete while an institution, the Fed, remains untouched? If Woods (and his polemical predecessor Murray Rothbard) is correct and the Fed is the main reason for not only the current crisis but the Great Depression, isn’t it time that there was finally at least a debate on the American central bank? Isn’t it time that we at least begin to discuss whether an unaccountable government institution might be the source of our problems instead of some inane bickering about regulations or the CRA?

The Fascism of Rush Limbaugh

Fascism is such an ugly word. I even hesitate to use it because it is so misunderstood. Fascism is used as an epithet so frequently, one might be justified in thinking that the proper definition of “fascism” is “describing someone with whom I disagree.”

Many thought National Review Online editor and smear artist in residence, Jonah Goldberg was going to educate people about fascism in his 2008 book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

In fact, Mr. Goldberg merely found heroes of 21st century liberals who had sympathies in the early 20th century with nascent fascist movements in the U.S. and Europe. He faintly connected the two as if to say, “Well, even though liberals always demonize conservatives as fascists, it’s actually liberals who have more a more fascistic intellectual heritage.“ In the end, Mr. Goldberg’s book never defined “fascism,” but he proceeded to use the word as a club against people to his right. “Fascism” was once again being used to define someone with whom, in this case, Jonah Goldberg, disagrees. Another dud in the great fascism-defining-game.

At its most basic level, “fascism” merely means the ultimate subordination of everything in the lives of citizens to an authoritarian state.

Nazi Germany was not fascistic because we fought a war against them. It was fascistic because the needs of the people were secondary to the needs of the regime. The government did not give people jobs in order to save them from starving or to help pull up a people devastated by economic depression and national humiliation. They gave people jobs to serve the infrastructure of the centralized state, as Hitler’s well-known public works campaign accomplished.

So there is an actual definition of fascism after all. Unfortunately, there are times when “fascism” is the correct word to use to describe an opponent. Even more saddening is that, despite all of my frustration at liberals who wield the word as a political club, today there are mainstream conservatives who deserve the epithet.

On February 11 of this year, Rush Limbaugh began his program by decrying those dirty Democrats for their horrible stimulus bill, their ballooning of the government, and their terrible foreign policy. I don’t know if Mr. Limbaugh is aware of this, but everything he moaned about was also committed by his Republican heroes.

Reading the transcript from the day in question, Mr. Limbaugh, in not so many words, announces that he is actually okay with a big, intrusive government that tramples on liberties and personal freedom, as long as Republicans get to use most of its power.

He said he wanted to take the mechanisms of the huge government the Democrats are building up so that when Republicans return to power they could turn it against them. Talk about your endorsements for big government!

That is what fascists do. They use the mechanisms of the government to prosecute political enemies. Hitler did it. Mussolini did it. The Communists do it. Conservatives who concern themselves with issues of liberty, do not do it.

Take another example, during some of the most contentious days of the Bush administration, Rush Limbaugh had the audacity to insinuate that the Democrats hate this government. They certainly hated the now-departed occupant of the White House, but what rational person believes that Democrats, the official big government party, actually hates government? What they hated most about the Bush years was that they were in the minority for most of them.

What Rush Limbaugh actually hated was that Democrats were speaking ill of the president. I cannot say if el Rushbo actually wanted to see the reintroduction of the Sedition Act of 1798 that made it a crime to criticize the president, but he did speak of the Democrats with such vigor that the entire party in question must have been guilty of treason.

Mr. Limbaugh simply babbled on and on about how the liberals just hate the country, all the while he continues to defend the record of George W. Bush.

One would actually think that if Rush Limbaugh looked critically at the Bush presidency, he could only conclude that a liberal had just departed office.

George W. Bush presided over the largest increase of the federal government to date. Liberals traditionally increase the government. He had an open borders immigration policy that, for a number of reasons, has only hurt Republicans. He signed the massive prescription drug plan that came directly out of LBJ’s Great Society playbook. He adopted an aggressive and reckless foreign policy, whose origin can be traced to Woodrow Wilson, the man who decided it was okay to sacrifice young Americans not for legitimate external threats, but to “make the world safe for democracy.”

There was practically nothing conservative in the past eight years. It looks to continue.

The era of George W. Bush and his orgiastic growth of the federal government led his conservative followers to worship it and consider the government to be beyond question. No one could question the actions of the Bush-led regime without being assaulted as unpatriotic or treasonous. To conservatives from 2001 to 2009, the Republican-led government was the meaning of their existence. While people like Rush Limbaugh did not craft this disastrous agenda, they did give it support for the crucial party base.

Under George W. Bush’s watch, the government became more intrusive in all of our lives. The Patriot Act validated the belief of those who were called “kooks” and “whackos” that we do indeed live in a surveillance state. Records became public, privacy became nonexistent, and liberties were curtailed. American conservatives were supposed to believe in fundamental freedom, but for eight years, they defined “freedom” as whatever the government does.

There is your fascism.

All of this spells out exactly what is wrong with the “conservative movement” in this leaderless era of the Republican Party. Whereas conservatism once stood for the supremacy of the individual, the only coherent point conservatives can really make today is that they are against the Democrats. Big government is evil when it is orchestrated by the Democrats but it is used for noble purposes by the Republican Party, they imply.

Considering these examples, one might conclude that Rush Limbaugh is not a genuine American conservative, but a fascist. He does not believe government is the answer to problems, of course unless Republicans get to be at the helm.

February 11, 2009 was a date of utter betrayal. It was a day when the unofficial conservative spokesman let the whole world know that he is perfectly comfortable with big government. His only problem centers around who pulls its strings.

Stop the charade, Rush. You are no conservative.

Try Harder

Well, President Obama got his stimulus.

There is little in the bill that is likely to make the Right giddy. Yet, there seems to be a chorus of disgust coming from Republicans of all ranks. The amount of pork and spending is indeed revolting. Barely less revolting is the transparent disgust of Republicans in the House and Senate.

Until they demonstrate otherwise, Republican clamoring about wasteful spending should be taken as political posturing, nothing more and nothing less.

Someone might be inclined to ask, Why? The Republicans were, with the exception of three senators, completely unified in opposition to the president’s stimulus bill. I would say that that someone is right, the Republicans were extremely unified in their opposition. But why all of a sudden? The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for six years and didn’t bat an eye at the monumental debt they created.

Even when they were demoted to minority party status after 2006, the Republicans didn’t get much better. When the vote came in the fall for the Wall Street bailout, House Minority Leader John Boehner led the GOP opposition against the bill, which led them to defeat the initial bill, and conservatives everywhere exuberantly cheered.

Hooray! Stopping this bailout and saving the taxpayers’ money is just what we need to retain the White House!

Then the bill got revamped, crammed with pork, and the Republicans, including their presidential candidate, turned around and voted in favor of the bigger bill. And then more Republicans were sent home after the election.

So how are things different now? There’s a Democratic president now, but his philosophy on spending is not much different from his predecessor’s. Both the defense and domestic budgets are bloated. There’s lots of pork and political pet projects. So what’s the difference?

It turns out Republicans are probably only concerned with fiscal sanity when it benefits them politically. They realize that billions in the bill are not “stimulus-related” and the actual stimulus the bill might provide will be marginal and won’t take effect for perhaps a couple of years. They had nothing to gain in voting for it. The stimulus was the initiative of the Democrats, it was loaded with pork and waste, and will probably instigate little growth that is outside the realm of the federal government. We already know that Republicans are just fine with stimulus bills if they are proposed by a Republican president. This is sheer political posturing and the Republicans’ only motivation is to take cover.

This is precisely why the Republicans are still a dormant party. Nobody should take this prodigal fiscal sanity seriously. The Republicans are screaming about how President Obama is spending the country into oblivion and that our children will have to shoulder the weight of this ghastly debt.

That is a very good point. Yet, where was this revulsion when George W. Bush was doing the exact same sort of spending?

And if Barack Obama is the one who sends us spiraling into terminal debt or an unscrupulous burden on our descendants, then it is because George W. Bush set the table for him. Why is President Obama’s spending evil and irresponsible when his predecessor’s was barely more responsible?

* * *

It is precisely because they supported George W. Bush’s every wish and whim and passed everything he wanted that this newfound opposition has to be politically motivated and nothing else.

Case in point: Missouri Republican Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond, inserted legislation into the bill committing money to Harley-Davidson motorcycles, a bill that he later voted “no” on.

That seems kind of odd. While I cannot gaze into the man’s heart, to the naked eye, it looks like having it both ways plus one: making sure money gets allocated, voting no on the entire bill, and then getting credit for appearing to care about the motorcycle industry. He doesn’t care about how much is actually in the bill, just how he can best benefit from his “no” vote. Those are not political principles at work, but sheer deception.

* * *

If the slow-moving stimulus really takes some sort of effect by 2010, the midterm elections will be just as disastrous for the Republicans as the last two have been.

If the Republicans wish to get out of their purgatory of minority status, they, like the president’s stimulus, will need some time. They will need it to prove themselves worthy of governing again, after such a dismal record during the Bush years.

But if the stimulus is an historic failure, then that will provide an opening for Republican congressional gains in 2010 and in 2012, our next presidential election year. It will take a new Republican president to determine whether Republicans have really learned their lesson or not. It’s easy for Republicans to oppose a liberal Democratic president with big-spending aspirations when the former’s constituents are seething. It’s quite a different story to oppose your own party’s president when he tries the same thing.

And for Republicans to come back, they do not need to move to the left or try to appease Democrats by dumping the social conservatives. To win elections again, they need to not only move past George W. Bush, but break his mold. No more “compassionate conservatism,” no more amnesty for illegal immigrants, no more LBJ-style domestic spending on prescription drugs, no more undeclared wars and nation-building, and no more they-might-as-well-be-the-51st-state alliance with Israel.

A Republican comeback lays in the somewhat distant future (4-8 years, the distant future in political years).

George W. Bush may be gone and not coming back, but the legacy he left to his party is still here and not going away. It will take a willingness to stand up to a president from their party who is overreaching in his executive power for us to see if the Republicans have really come home.

Of course unless the next Republican president has a record of responsible spending, prudent governance, and fidelity to the laws of the republic (be it Ron Paul, South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, or someone else of their statesmanship) then it will be much easier for Republicans to lay claim for a new dynasty.

Again, that is for the future.

And I hope Michael Steele is reading.

Stop It!

One of my favorite Mad TV sketches features Bob Newhart, as a therapist whose only advice to any patient was contained in two words: Stop it! When a woman who suffers from an irrational fear of being buried alive in a box comes in, his advice is the same: "Stop it!" No matter what inner difficulties the woman brought up, the therapist’s answer was always “Stop it!” I heartily recommend that our lawmakers see Bob Newhart’s most recent rendition of therapy.

One of President Barack Obama’s first initiatives as the chief executive is to implement an economic stimulus package that he repeatedly tells his countrymen is designed to save the American economy from the catastrophes of tax cuts and capitalism.

It should not be too surprising that Democrats wish to pass a package that would be the more invasive than any government measure into the economy since the New Deal, at a time when the current hardships are still nowhere near those endured during the Great Depression, which was only exacerbated because of those interventions. In short, the stimulus package is not so much meant to stimulate the economy, but an initiative to create more political capital for the new president. One portion that has since been excluded from the package, perhaps due to its sheer odiousness, was bailout money for Planned Parenthood (I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t believe the killing industry has any shortage of business).

The more President Obama says some version of "We have to do something because to do nothing would be worse," more people will get scared, remain scared, and eventually begin to believe it. Think of it as a Patriot Act for Democrats.

The Democratic president disparages the Bush tax cuts, one of his predecessor’s finest measures, because the national debt skyrocketed and our nation’s financial institutions crumbled during the final months of the lame duck administration. In other words, the new president is trying to tell us that the economy is teetering toward collapse because Americans were allowed to have more money in their paycheck, and nothing to do with the ridiculous spending spree President Bush and the Republicans went on. President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery seems to be, don’t cut taxes, but go on a ridiculous spending spree. President Bush’s problem was not that he cut taxes, but that he cut taxes, and then did not begin reducing the size of the government to compensate for the lost revenue. President Obama wants to leave taxes where they are, for the time-being it would seem, and then increase the size of the federal government.

Now that the Democratic-bashing portion of the blog is through, let us move on to the Democrats’ henchmen.

What should be more surprising, but that I fear is not, is that the Republicans are willing co-participants in this mad spending scheme as well.

How? you might say, didn’t every House Republican vote against the stimulus bill as it appeared in the House of Representatives? Yes, but every House Republican voted against a massive spending bill that could have caused revolts among their constituents had they voted for it, and every House Republican voted against a massive spending bill that did not need any of their votes.

The Democrats have such a strong majority in the House that they got the bill passed without any Republicans. By voting against the bill out of pure political expediency, they avoided the heat from their home districts. While many Republican cheerleaders on talk radio praised the Republicans and suggested that they might be returning to their fiscal principles, their votes meant nothing because the bill still passed.

By having nothing to lose by doing so, they voted against it. We still need time to see if the Republicans have made a prodigal journey back to fiscal sanity.

But what really made me reach for the Tums is what the party’s senators began attempting once the package reached their chamber.

When Democrats first suggested a $300 billion stimulus package, the Republicans gave the nod to them and then some: they said $445 billion would be just fine.

Republican senators want to give tax credits to homeowners since the housing market bubble has utterly popped. A tax credit, which sounds like it might be good, is really just another manifestation of welfare. Whereas a tax cut in the form of George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, allows the taxpayer to keep more of their income in their paycheck, a tax credit is a check from the federal government, with money that was printed from out of nowhere.

We can honestly say that we have a bipartisan government.

President Obama, during his never-ending campaign, said that he would bring Americans together and help heal our partisan wounds. Well, all that has happened since he took office is bring Republicans and Democrats together in a massive feast of pork. The parties are fighting over how much money should be in these stimulus packages and that should sound off alarms to conscientious citizens.

The only debate occurring over the spending bills are regarding how much should be spent and on what. There is no debate regarding whether so much money should be spent in the first place.

People seem to have forgotten that one short year ago, President Bush introduced a stimulus package to help boost a slumping economy. The stimulus did nothing to stop the collapse and nationalization of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers. President Bush’s massive spending bill did nothing to stop the impending economic disaster. President Obama’s massive spending bill is even more massive and will only exacerbate the problem and ultimately cause more suffering for reasons already illuminated.

My prescription for the economy is to actually do very little. The current system cannot fix the disaster. It has been the invasive bipartisan federal government of this country that has caused this disaster.

Another appealing solution is to simply eliminate the Federal Reserve, that corrupt printer of bad money, which is the topic of Thomas E. Woods’ forthcoming book, Meltdown, A Free Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts will Make Things Worse.

Let this prescription for the horrific levels of spending and bad money be quick and to the point: Stop It!

Dubya's Swan Song

Now in the final hours of his administration, President George W. Bush seems to be receiving some final well-wishes, even from many of his harshest critics while his few remaining supporters seem intent on supporting him blindly while seemingly refusing to acknowledge his deficiencies. So ends the odd and sometimes insuffrable Bush years.

The failure of the administration of the 43rd president is not that he invaded Iraq, was apparently asleep at the wheel when Hurricane Katrina hit, sided with Ted Kennedy on education and immigration, flubbed his initial Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers, or grew government at LBJ speeds. It was all of this that derailed him. It was the liberalism of the first Republican president of the 21st century that caused his failure.

The conservatism embodied in Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan died during the past eight years. It was not merely that the president was liberal when we thought he was conservative, but he had legions of followers on the Right who followed him too blindly. After an election where conservatives and Republicans bemoaned the cult of personality surrounding our incoming president, we should be reminded that an idol was made out of the most recent occupant of the office. Conservatives followed a failed president off the cliff. The wreckage lies at the bottom.

Despite all that, even his biggest mistake, Iraq, is not uniquely Mr. Bush’s fault. His enablers came from both parties. Democrats and Republicans to this day continue to funnel American tax dollars into a Middle Eastern black hole.

Many people (yes, liberals) desired to see Saddam Hussein deposed but only when a humanitarian war went south did they begin to denounce it. The war of national security to remove weapons of mass destruction, that likely existed at one time, became a war of ideology (democracy) and a clash of civilizations. I have stubbornly clung to the belief that the President did not lie in making his case to the nation about the war with Iraq (in fact, I have far more contempt for the neoconservative advisors who, like they did for many others, duped the president about the threat of Hussein‘s Iraq), but regret his refusal to correct an obvious mistake.

Some of the remaining supporters of the president are taking these final hours to harangue his critics who gave him nothing but grief from the very beginning. External obstacles, by and large, did not ruin the presidency of Mr. Bush. It was mainly the ones he set for himself: Iraq, the bureaucratic nightmare of Katrina, his incompetent presiding over a corrupt party, that is what made George W. Bush a failed president and a tragic historical figure.

There is little doubt that George W. Bush’s time in office will be judged by his decision to go to war in Iraq. He will be fortunate if the economy turns around and the recession manages to avoid becoming a depression as the plummeting economy is considered by many to be the final tragic legacy Mr. Bush is leaving to his country.

It was his liberalism that ruined the president’s two terms. Even though Mr. Bush’s successor promises to be different, he appears poised to keep doing more of the same. Instead of Iraq, Mr. Obama will ratchet up the American presence in Afghanistan, a country perhaps impossible to pacify, that could ruin his presidency as the former country ruined Mr. Bush’s. The government grew at an alarming rate under this Republican president and the incoming Democratic president, with stronger majorities than his predecessor ever had, is prepared to explode the government to new and more invasive depths. Did we really learn nothing from the Bush years?

These last few days have filled me with regret. It serves little purpose now to get angry with George W. Bush. After all that has happened over the past eight years, I feel a little sorry for him. Yes, he has been a failed president, but his failure was not inevitable. If he had kept his 2000 campaign pledge of a humble foreign policy and kept his promise to get government out of the people’s way, he would have avoided some of these massive disasters.

Alas, it was not. History is not written by what could have been or what should have been, but what was, and the 43rd president was as an abject failure. Mr. Bush leaves the White House tomorrow and returns home to Texas, which is a site I believe everyone, including the president himself, is happy to see.

Goodbye, Mr. President.

They Never Learn

Since 2006, when neoconservatism and the Republican Party of the George W. Bush years were thoroughly discredited, I began to realize that the GOP is like the Bourbons, the royal family deposed during the French Revolution, and fully restored after Napoleon’s final defeat. When Charles X became King of France in 1824, he ignored the liberals (not liberals in the current sense) and remained loyal to the royalist factions. Talleyrand, the distinguished diplomat, said that the “Bourbons had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” So it would also seem with the Republicans and especially the neoconservatives.

George W. Bush squeaked his way to reelection in 2004 but the victory was short-lived. His second inaugural address was skeptically received due to its unfounded and ahistorical vision about “eliminating tyranny from the earth.” As if Afghanistan and the only-beginning to burn Iraq were not enough, the president seemed to think that America had the might and mandate to eliminate tyranny from the world and turn every other country into another America - at the point of a gun, that is.

In 2005, violence ratcheted up in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina hit, and the president was quickly becoming an abandoned man. The shabby response to the hurricane signaled a failure of government, or at least the bloated bureaucracy. The president was painted as a man who did not care about the plight of the New Orleanians displaced by the storm. It has been said that that was the beginning of the end for a positive Bush legacy.

Iraq descended into civil war in 2006 and every Republican faced an uphill battle in the midterm elections that year because almost all Republicans had steadfastly and unconditionally supported the president on his war that the country was souring on. When those election results returned, Democrats, who promised they would end U.S. involvement in Iraq, gained 31 House seats and the majority.

So how have the Bush Republicans and neoconservatives learned nothing and forgotten nothing? Even though they have been abandoning the president in droves, many of the neocons are only abandoning the man and none of the ideas that led to the failure of his presidency.

When presidential nominees began announcing their intentions in early 2007, the automatic frontrunners for the Republicans were Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. Both were fervent supporters of a war the American people had already decided they were tired of. No one in the entire Republican field, except Ron Paul, would admit that going to Iraq was a mistake. They only had differences with the way President Bush handled the war.

What is more, nobody would ever actually mention President Bush’s name because he had become such a pariah. But nobody would ever actually depart from the philosophy that led to Bush’s ruin: neoconservatism. There was no discussion about whether Iraq was the right course or not, only how it could have been done better, or whether we have any business beginning to bomb Iran, as if engaging that country militarily would prove any better for our country than engaging Iraq or Afghanistan have been.

The philosophy has not changed and the Republicans seem ready to continue losing elections and influence in the country.

This past Tuesday President-elect Barack Obama had his now-famous dinner at the home of George Will, who was hosting, among others, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, one of the main theorists for American intervention in the Middle East. The meeting has been called, “Obama breaking bread with conservatives.” However, there is nothing particularly conservative about any of the people the new president dined with (besides Kristol, there was Rich Lowry of the formery conservative National Review, New York Times "conservative" David Brooks, and The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, another main theorist of American interventionism around the globe.

What is odd about this is that Mr. Obama spent his entire presidential campaign complaining about the path George W. Bush led us down and how we can’t afford any more of it.

So why was he meeting with several of the people who either planned or vociferously defended this disastrous presidency? As I have commented before, it is not as though the president-elect met with those on the Right such as Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, or Joe Sobran, who opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, as Mr. Obama claims he had done. Is it possible that the "Change" president isn't going to change much of anything at all?

Despite his occasional antiwar rhetoric about the Iraqi quagmire, he seems intent on escalating the quagmire in Afghanistan. Escalating any war is sure to make any neoconservative or anyone pro-war on the Right delirious, so they are naturally gravitating toward him.

Even though this ideology of perpetual war for perpetual peace has crashed and burned during the Bush years, many of these people are still intent on preserving it for some time in the future.

A word of confession is required here: I was an Iraq war supporter from around 2003-late 2004. I didn’t understand too much of the war or the region, but supported it because I wanted to support my country and my president. But as I expanded my reading and my reasoning matured, I discovered that perhaps this war was not in the nation’s best strategic interest and may actually hurt us. I admit that I was wrong and have changed my mind. I maintain that it is not a flip-flop; I do maintain that I have gotten smarter than I was when I was 19/20 years old. Not to blow my own horn, but I believe it’s a shame others are still blinded by their own ideology of imperialism that they rationalize that it fails not because it is a fallen, sinful world where no ideology can work the way it does in one’s mind, but because the current executive was too incompetent to make it work right.

This policy of imperialism will fail with Barack Obama, too, but it doesn't look like he, nor anyone around him, will learn that before it is too late.