Racism and Us

What is racism? That’s a good question these days. It might be easier to define the meaning of life in one sentence.

Americans are already overwhelmed about race. Ethnic studies and diversity seminars are as much a part of contemporary university campuses as the football team. Every week our government and media masters inform the peasantry that we require a (new) Conversation on Race and someone the other day told me that we now have our first black president.

What we know about racism is like what George Orwell said about fascism, that it ‘has no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable.’

We have been particularly bombarded with “evidence” of “racism” lately.

There is still smoke emanating from the Shirley Sherrod-firing-rehiring fiasco. New Black Panther Samir Shabazz’s clarion call to kill cracker babies still shocks anyone except those familiar with the New Black Panthers.

Everyday for awhile it seemed like another vulgar recording of Mel Gibson surfaced with Mel using another one of those words.

His rants were more painful than shocking, but they were also words in what was meant to be a private conversation.

This is bandied about by the tolerance-mongers as proof that Mel is a racist. Of course, the faster one denounces Mel and calls him a dirty racist, the more racially enlightened one is, or so the logic would seem.

Even Shirley Sherrod’s case is an exercise in silliness. Although she’s been exonerated, mostly by a liberal press embarrassed to have been snookered by some simple editing from Andrew Breitbart, the infamous video still catches her imputing racism to President Obama’s opponents. Even then, it’s hard to see how her own purported racism would affect her performance as a USDA state director of rural development, a bureaucratic post that should probably be eliminated anyway.

But there is certainly more than thought crimes going on.

A political appointee is about to be rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land and it seems normal. Chris Dodd, one of the chief clowns who both perpetuated and benefited from the housing scam gets to write the “financial reform bill” with nary a peep. Meanwhile, July ends as the deadliest month in a nine year war. Like racism, the national interest in Afghanistan seems to have as protean a definition.

Of particular importance to Americans should be what this all says us.

The sad truth is that charges of racism are not likely to end anytime soon. Not only is it hopeless (and bloody) to attempt perfecting mankind, but because charging someone with racism is simply too valuable, convenient, and probably fun for any of its users to surrender.

The ruling class definitely has no intention of letting racism, real or imagined, fade into memory – to its own benefit.

The fastest way to silence opposition, the race racket gets outright encouragement from our overlords. We contaminate political discussion ourselves when we launch into self-righteous diatribes. Out go questions about constitutionality - in comes whether some minutiae in a speech pandering to Muslims means President Obama is secretly a Muslim.

Democrats, who were once the party of segregation, have been the masters of this but Republicans, and many of their partisans who have joined this highly-received but poorly-written farce, are catching up.

It’s not too surprising. There are few satisfactions greater than getting to assail someone else as a racist. It’s a not-so-thinly veiled pat-on-the-back.

But it is for all these reasons that our ruling class cherishes these squabbles. Instead of Nero fiddling while Rome burned it’s the citizenry.

Maybe Americans aren’t actually interested in citizenship and civic responsibility. Maybe politics and current events are just another form of entertainment and playing the racist game is just everyone’s favorite episode.

As a game, it’s just another way for a dreadfully narcissistic culture to fall further in love with itself and where a Republican or Democrat winning office is no more impactful than which Kardashian sister is dating which sports star.

Instead of issues like the Constitution, natural rights, and peace consuming our creative energies, perhaps this is the republic we actually want.

And get.

Peter Schiff's Parallel Universe and Ours

Under discussion: How An Economy Grows And Why It Crashes by Peter D. Schiff and Andrew J. Schiff, 233 pages, $19.95, Hardcover.

In that parallel universe Peter Schiff is probably winning his race for Senate.

But here in the United States of Criminals, Celebrities, and Corporations, he barely has ballot access in the Connecticut race to replace Chris Dodd where he trails such Republican heroes as WWE First Lady Linda McMahon and former congressman Rob Simmons before Simmons dropped out.

The groundswell for a Schiff candidacy emerged in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse which Schiff had predicted for years, explaining that the illusion of wealth created for the housing boom could not be sustained and that the inevitable bust would spread to other sectors of the economy. A mash-up video of his appearances on various financial TV shows in 2006 and 2007, where he was openly derided and actually laughed at, is titled “Peter Schiff was Right” and has been a Youtube sensation with over one million views.

So just how did Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital brokerage firm, know that the economy was going to crash when almost every pontificator on both sides of the aisle was promising that the good times would never end? Did he have a crystal ball? Was he imbued with special powers to see when those unpredictable financial catastrophes are barreling down the road?

Well, one thing Peter Schiff was blessed with was a father who discovered the Austrian school of economic thought after breaking out of the New Deal orbit sometime during the 1950’s.

Schiff’s father, Irwin, is well-known among anti-IRS crusaders and perpetual victim of the income tax tyranny. At 82, Irwin is currently in federal prison (not for the first time) after unsuccessfully challenging the tax code.

But when Irwin was much younger, he entertained his boys in long car rides with economic lessons disguised as stories. One such story was “The Fish Story” which Irwin turned into a book in 1979 entitled, How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t. In 2010 “The Fish Story” was modified and turned into How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes.

At first, How an Economy Grows almost seems an odd selection for a traditional review because it is so simple and straightforward. Since the inspiration for the book is a children’s story, it’s written on a level anyone can understand. And with many of the fictional characters (from Ben Barnacle to Tricky Dickson) based loosely on real people it is certainly entertaining for adults.

The narrative can really be split into two sections. The first half is about how a primitive society began on a remote island. From there the reader is introduced to basic Austrian economics through fish. Since fish is the abundant material on the island and holds real value for the islanders it is the obvious choice for currency. The fish had value everyone on the island could appreciate and understand. Someone wants a canoe? That’ll be nine fish. That might be a lot of fish, but a canoe was a luxury and cost a lot to construct.

Then as time progressed and people had more fish on hand they discovered they needed some form of fish repository – a bank!

With depositors fish could be loaned out to prospective entrepreneurs. If the would-be businessman had a good opportunity to repay the loan with interest then there was a better chance he could get the loan in the first place. The bank might have to turn people down for loans, but they had to because they were at risk themselves. What if the loan was issued to someone who couldn’t handle it and defaulted? Who would bail them out?

Here the reader learns about the basics of banking, lending, credit, and saving.

As the people of the island increased their numbers they realized they needed some form of government and so the second half of the story begins and the republic Usonia was born. Governed by 12 senators including an executive Senator in Chief, a constitution was written so that the senators would not overstep their authority.

But after a few generations, the Senate’s wise and prudential statesmen were replaced by more appealing “go-getters.” Schiff portrays the moment things changed when Senator in Chief hopeful Franky Deep came into power:

“He observed that people loved getting stuff for free. Similarly, they hated paying taxes. So, he devised a plan: if he could find a way to make it look like he was giving something to the islanders for free, then he could gain their unconditional support. Unfortunately, all the government had was what it raised in taxes. The Senate didn’t catch any fish. They could only give by taking. How could they give away more than they took?

“After a particularly bad monsoon, Franky sensed an opportunity (politicians never let a crisis go to waste).

“He preached, ‘My fellow islanders, the storm we have just been through has wrought untold hardship on our people. Many of our citizens are now hutless and fishless.

“’We cannot stand idly by and do nothing. If elected, I will institute a government reconstruction program for our neediest citizens to repair the damage.’ But he assured the citizens that the cost of the construction would be paid for by the economic activity the spending generated.

“His opponent, Grouper Cleveland, offered nothing, except wise stewardship of the island’s savings and a promise not to interfere with the liberties of the citizenry.

“Not surprisingly, Franky Deep sailed into office as Senator in Chief.” (104-105)

With the institution of paper money in the form of Fish Reserve Notes, redeemable pieces of paper backed by real fish in the vaults, the rest of the story is laid out:

“The new bank director . . . was not crazy about the new fish notes. He thought the ease in which the notes could be printed would create dangerous incentives for the senators. Yet, he could sleep soundly at night provided that the government maintained enough actual government fish in the bank to redeem all the notes.

“Not surprisingly, his confidence didn’t last long.

“Soon, Franky and his agents had handed over far more Fish Reserve Notes than the government’s account had fish to redeem.”

“’Franky, stop the presses! . . . I have only nine fish available for every 10 notes that you guys have handed out. If the savers figure out that there really aren’t enough fish to cover their deposits, there will be a run on the bank and I’ll be out of fish. . . .’” (107)

Slowly but surely all of his successors followed Franky’s lead. The newly-appointed bank chairmen, beginning with Ally Greenfin and later with Ben Barnacle, followed in giving the government what they wanted. After Franky Deep came Lindy B, promising to

“Furnish the canoe navy with bigger spears, but he would also help the sagging economy by 'providing emergency unemployment fish notes to all laid-off workers' prevailing over Buddy Goldfish who offered nothing but careful stewardship of the island’s savings and boring protection for the islander’s economic liberties. More importantly, Buddy argued that the island could not afford such an extravagant ‘spears and fish’ policy.

“Not surprisingly, Lindy won in a landslide.” (126)

And comparably broad parallels to modern America finish out the story.

Humorously illustrated, Schiff’s story is a pleasurable read. It demonstrates that basic knowledge of economics is simple and that the laws of economics apply the same to complex societies as they do for simple ones. In short, if more saving is necessary for people on a small island to recover from disaster then saving is what is necessary to rescue a large society.

Peter Schiff will certainly not win his election for U.S. Senate in Connecticut. But he has bequeathed a valuable chapter of economic education to his country.

Perhaps this time people will listen.

Limiting the Republic

It would seem that term limits are getting a hearing in 2010.

Among the tenets of the 1994 Republican Revolution was support for term limits, many of the GOP challengers promising to serve no more than three terms and retire. Most Republicans didn’t keep the promise, although ironically it was one promise Mark Sanford could keep.

The theme might be picking up steam again as Rand Paul won his primary election on a platform of term limits and no earmarks.

The antithesis: Ninety-Two years old, the longest serving member of the Senate and reportedly the “King of Pork,” Robert Byrd’s death is a reminder about the soundness of term limits and how even in as anti-Establishment an atmosphere as 2010, any meaningful change in Washington D.C. is little more than an exercise in futility unless something deeply penetrates the American soul.

Accompanying the obligatorily fawning obituaries of Robert Byrd, longest serving senator, reformed Klansman, constitutional scholar, has been the mention of his most enduring accomplishment: pork to West Virginia.

As chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Byrd secured the lion’s share of federal money for his state. Dubbed the “King of Pork” as an insult, Byrd embraced the epithet as a badge of honor. It’s tempting to chuckle about how Byrd turned the charge on its head, but it also highlights the problem of enacting term limits.

The most obvious problem is that term limits are dependent on the willingness of the authorities to voluntarily relinquish power. If there is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program then what is more permanent than the bureaucrat who never retires?

But this problem cuts two ways.

A career politician becomes such not just because he won’t retire from office. Voters have to keep electing them. William Murchison of Chronicles magazine answers an important question:

“Nearly everyone has heard Lord Acton’s axiom about power: It ‘tends to corrupt.’ Corrupt whom, though? The power-wielders alone? Just as corrupted can be the beneficiaries of the exercise of power.”

If we’re supposed to believe that West Virginians weren’t grateful for the federal money Byrd sent their way for decades then how else might we explain how one the reddest states awarded the old Democrat nine terms in the Senate? Can West Virginians, or any American, name any piece of legislation Byrd ever authored?

On the issue of earmarks and appropriation, Americans can be a little fickle.

We are aghast when we realize how much money is wasted on a certain congressman or senator’s pet project back in their home state but we aren’t as appalled when our local farmers get subsidies or the community gets a new public park, even if the sign at the entrance has to be defaced with a politician’s name.

In short, we like the pork when we’re the ones getting it.

As such, Americans cannot possibly be serious about cutting spending or reducing the size of government unless we are willing to deny ourselves some of the luxuries we’ve become accustomed to receiving from the federal government. Part of this includes the luxury of having elected representatives dedicated to getting us the goodies.

Professor and columnist Walter Williams likes to tell a story about the late Senator Jesse Helms.

On principle, both Williams and Helms were opponents of subsidies, but Helms got them for his state anyway. Why?

Helms believed the voters of North Carolina would have sent him packing in favor of someone who would give them their God-given subsidies. Considering Helms was not a legislator known for buckling to the pressures of popular opinion, his story delivers a sad message about the mentality and entitlement of American voters.

Therefore, the solution is bound up in more than just an election or a few elections. It requires a change of heart. Demanding others give up their goodies requires giving up our own.

It also means Americans must stop asking themselves, “What can government do for me?” because when the government does something for me it has to do something for everyone else. In a nation of over 300 million, a $13 trillion deficit is just the start.

Was Benjamin Franklin right when he said that republics end when the people discover they can vote themselves money from the treasury?

Race Card Hypocrisy

There has been no shortage of race cards since Barack Obama’s presidency began.

Most are obvious, of course.

The race card has been standard fare for the Democrats since LBJ. The election of a black president and the emergence of a populist movement on the Right only accelerated the claims.

It’s hard to forget Janeane Garofalo’s sanctimonious monologue with Keith Olbermann, “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

Conservatives and Tea Partiers were understandably furious.

The Tea Party movement may have conspicuously risen during the early days of the Obama administration, but to leap to the conclusion that the only possible reason grassroots Republicans could oppose the new Democratic president’s agenda was the occupant’s skin color, required an extraordinary sense of moral superiority.

During the Obama reign, conservatives have been adamant that their opposition to the Obama agenda has nothing to do with his skin color but all about the philosophy.

This would seem true.

There may have been no Tea Party movement during the 1990’s, but the hysteria about a popular, iconic Democratic president drummed up on the Right was similar during the Clinton administration. But admitting that a sizeable number of today’s protesters are simply GOP partisans doesn’t win many points with key Democratic constituencies and it doesn’t make for great TV ratings either.

Conservatives have also been quick to remind the Democrats that they don’t exactly have a pure history of multicultural kumbayah-ocity. Nor do we go very long before someone reminds us that Vice President Biden once said, “You cannot go into a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts without a slight Indian accent.”

But the point today is not to show how Democrats are hypocrites when it comes to race.

We know that it is not racist to oppose a black man’s agenda. If conservatives really believe in a limited, constitutional government, then there is little in the Obama administration that is worthy of praise. We know that the racist charges are meant to silence dissent.

With that in mind, why are conservatives playing the race card in the aftermath of the Israeli flotilla incident?

Despite claims from the White House that there will be “no daylight between the U.S. and Israel,” and despite accepting a non-binding U.N. resolution that does not actively condemn Israel’s actions, why are conservatives insisting that the Obama administration is “anti-Israel”?

Would we tolerate this sort of hyperbole if this was any nation besides Israel?

Take this recent video from conservative filmmaker Andrew Klavan.





In it, Klavan uses the sound of a honking horn to illustrate when anti-Semitism is being said, to show how it rings out loudly when uttered by a bigot.









This stunt is funny, although in an unintentional way, because it was always my observation that self-righteously condemning someone’s unauthorized opinion was the exclusive domain of liberals.



Here, Klavan demonstrates that conservatives have a chance to club liberals for not being enlightened enough on race (and by taking a quote from Pat Buchanan out of context, Klavan proves that even the mention of Hitler’s name without immediate condemnation equals anti-Semitism).



Klavan:



“We said never again would we stand by and watch such an atrocity [the Holocaust] to occur. And now that the Jews are once again in danger of destruction, we’re not standing by, we’re actually pitching in to help.”



This may have been satire, but it captures the bootlicking required to avoid the anti-Semite epitaph.



After all, did we not just see Rand Paul risk excommunication because the Thought Police assailed him for holding a single philosophical dispute with one point of the Civil Rights Act? Is this any different?



Is it possible to have a difference with policies of the Israeli government without being anti-Semitic?



Is it possible to think the Palestinians should have their own state without being anti-Semitic?



Is it possible to think Israel should be in charge of its own self-defense without being anti-Semitic?



Is it possible to think that the actions of the Israeli government might not be infallible without being anti-Semitic?



Is it possible to disagree with President Obama without being a white supremacist?



Conservatives should know better.

We Have an Israel Problem

This Memorial Day weekend, while most Americans were preparing for backyard barbecues and mattress sales, and even a few remembering our war dead, a now-worldwide incident unfolded where the Israeli Defense Force boarded a humanitarian flotilla destined for a blockaded Gaza, captured the crew and killed perhaps sixteen people in the process.

The international reaction to this incident has indeed been one of furor.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called the killing of civilians “a grave act.” The German government issued a statement saying that Israel must consider “proportionality” regarding its own self-defense while the Norwegian Prime Minister called for an end to the blockade of Gaza. (Source: Yahoo News)

Over here, commentators on both sides of the aisle are tripping over themselves in an ugly farce trying to justify Israel’s actions.

Marty Peretz at the reliably liberal New Republic tries to convince us that “The Facts are on Israel’s Side.”

On David Horowitz’s Newsreal blog, which never misses an opportunity to confuse Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States, the proprietor shamelessly called the people on the flotilla “armed jihadists” without a single reputable attribution to support his loaded claim and despite video footage showing that the passengers, at best, had makeshift weapons with which to defend themselves against armed Israeli soldiers boarding their ship. Apparently neoconservatives like Horowitz believe Turks armed with metal rods are a genuine threat to professionally-trained soldiers with automatic weapons.

Over at National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson imitated an Israeli press secretary thusly,

“The fallout from Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount, the distortions around the 2002 terrorist storming of the Church of Nativity, the 2006 Lebanon war — over time, these incidents do their part, in weird fashion, to incur hatred for a liberal democracy while creating sympathy for a theocratic thugocracy like Hamas.”

A simpler way to look at it is if Larry King, who is currently going through his seventh divorce, defiantly exclaimed on television, “Cheat on half a dozen wives and suddenly you get a reputation as an adulterer.”

So what does all this mean?

The very fact that this incident is such an issue in the United States demonstrates that we have an Israel problem.

Can anyone identify the vital U.S. national interest in the eastern Mediterranean?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is all over American television defending the IDF’s actions calling it “self-defense.” That is to be expected.

But why are Americans like Victor Davis Hanson exercising every benefit of the doubt for a foreign government? The Obama White House, which has sycophantically stated that there will be no “daylight between the U.S. and Israel,” is probably wondering how to get that sort of treatment.

The problem is not whether Israel is right or wrong in disputes like these but that we defend and subsidize Israel in disputes that are none of our business in the first place.

And just what can the world expect in response?

Even if Hamas had nothing to do with this flotilla, does any rational thinker believe they will let this incident pass and not use it to increase their pressure on the Jewish state? Even new British Prime Minister David Cameron notes how the blockade and attack on this flotilla only strengthens Hamas’ grip on the besieged Palestinians.

Ardent Israel defenders in this country should set aside their hysteria to consider just one fact: Israel may have numerous enemies, but she is not weak.

Even if every exaggerated nightmare about Israel’s plight was true, their actions over the weekend, in their 2006 war in Lebanon, and the 2008 war in Gaza have demonstrated to the world that they are capable of defending themselves with relative ease.

Nor has this incident provided any real discomfort or danger for any American (except perhaps one American who is suspected to have been on the flotilla).

Moreover, Israel brings so much of this on herself.

For a country constantly claiming to be struggling in an anti-Semitic world, someone ought to ask why Israel insists on behaving in such a way that creates more resentment than security. Is this not making Israel’s enemies our enemies?

Perhaps it is time for some brave soul in Washington to ask, “What are we getting out of this relationship?”

The Smear Bund Reloads

“I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners - I abhor racism, I think it’s a bad business decision to ever exclude anybody from your restaurant - but at the same time I do believe in private ownership but I think there should be absolutely no discrimination in anything that gets any public funding.”

- Rand Paul, May 20, 2010

Fresh off a resounding primary win, Rand Paul didn’t leave himself much time for a “honeymoon” this week when he inadvertently uttered one of the Things You’re Not Allowed To Say.

Just what did he say? Did he espouse the merits of racism? Did he lament that the country did not elect Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrats in 1948? Did our good and benevolent media handlers, who cannot possibly have an agenda of their own, catch Rand changing out of his surgical scrubs and into his Klan hood?

Rather, Rand Paul made a statement intolerable to our political and cultural elites when he suggested that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not infallible.

In fact, there was nothing in the above quote that was even inconsistent with his philosophy.

Rand Paul’s entire campaign thus far has been about keeping government out of the lives of private citizens. Do the liberals (and a conservative establishment altogether unhappy with this marriage) want us to believe that Rand’s whole campaign, nay, whole life dedicated to preserving the privacy and rights of the individual was just part of a grand scheme to reinstitute segregated lunch counters?

It wasn’t enough to say that racism is wrong. It wasn’t enough to point out the economic stupidity inherent to discrimination practiced by business owners. Rand Paul’s detractors, both Left and Right, show us that the only acceptable way to be absolved or recused of racism is to faithfully recite the court history.

Always tenuous in his relationship with the Republican Party, whose full support he needs, a chastened Dr. Paul, with all the passion of a church heretic choosing expediency over burning at the steak, has backpedaled by saying that he would have undoubtedly supported the Civil Rights Act, a position he implied in the first place. Perhaps now that he says he believes all the articles of the government catechism, the Inquisition of Acceptable Opinion will pull back on the reins.

But this is unlikely to end as this is only the second act of a play we’ve already seen.

The Democrats have naturally lacerated Rand. They are loathe to ever pass up an opportunity to project their bloated sense of moral superiority at anyone who disagrees with them by labeling them a racist or bigot. Perhaps even less surprising is how the GOP has turned its back and tepidly cheered on the Left’s hysterics.

The Republicans, who are none too happy that Rand pummeled their candidate of choice, finally have a reason to throw him to the wolves. For a candidate whom they have no passionate attachment, cutting the rope comes naturally and easily. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the party who left Jim Bunning to twist in the wind has given the same treatment to his potential successor.

While there is a fair amount of criticism about Rand Paul’s campaign, particularly among libertarians, that he is so reviled by his party’s establishment, both before and after a landslide primary victory, shows that his enemies still see him as a legitimate threat to cut against the grain of his party. And that is what cannot be tolerated.

Despite all of this, it’s still doubtful this will sink the 25-point lead Rand currently holds over his opponent. Try as they might, the Democrats cannot put “macaca” in his mouth.

But Rand Paul has been here before.

Last December, a prominent staffer resigned when racist content was found on his myspace.com page. Although the staffer, Chris Hightower, did not author the substance, he did leave it alone, an indication that he values a person’s right to the freedom of speech, even when it’s detestable.

Likewise, Rand Paul never condoned racism or discrimination but only nodded that property rights are sacred in the western tradition, even when the holders themselves are repulsive.

But the point is that Rand Paul has survived this sort of controversy before. He kept on his message of rejecting government interference and balancing the budget, even when his primary opponent tried to use this incident as a club in evidence of Rand’s “strange ideas.”

Yet, Rand Paul is still naturally strong in this race. He’s the indisputably conservative candidate in an indisputably conservative state.

“Gotcha” questions like these will come up again. The successful distraction caused by this kerfuffle only proves that it will come up again because the more time we spend talking about 46-year-old legislation that is not about to be repealed means there will be less time to talk about dangerously inflated budgets that are sinking the economy.

Rand Paul needs to get together with his team to prepare for every possible contingency because the next irrelevant question is already being cooked up.

Otherwise, damage control will have to be added to his list of talking points.

*

Here are a few other takes on this situation that are worth a read:

Tom Woods: Rand Paul and the Zombies
Jack Hunter: Rand Paul's Practical Philosophy
Daniel McCarthy: Rand Paul and the Paleos
Daniel Larison: Can Rand Paul Revive Conservative Foreign Policy?
Jacob Hornberger: Rand Paul, Civil Rights, and More Liberal Hypocrisy on Race
Michael Scheuer: Maddow and the Obamas: Killers of Hope, Spurs of Rebellion
Wes Messamore: A Question for Rachel Maddow
Chris W: Progressive Hypocrisy and Rand Paul

**

This essay is also now up at The Humble Libertarian.

Spin Cycle

Message to Voters: Vote for more of the same!

Lebanon Junction, Kentucky

Less than a week before Kentucky Republicans go to the polls to choose their U.S. Senate candidate, the Bluegrass State looks poised to host a political upset that would impress Harry Truman. Sensing this, every GOP hack and lackey is coming to save Trey Grayson from a truly humiliating defeat.

Practically hand-selected by Senate minority leader and unofficial dean of Kentucky’s Republican Party, Trey Grayson was supposed to waltz to the nomination as the candidate who was sure to beat the Democrats in November. It was over a year ago that an anonymous GOP operative told Politico, when Grayson formed his exploratory committee, that “For the first time, we now know who the Republican nominee will be next November and that’s Trey Grayson.”

But we’ve been through a lot since April 2009.

Before he published God and Man at Yale, William F. Buckley’s intended pilot volume had been tentatively titled Revolt Against the Masses. If this senate race was translated into a book it would surely be called Revolt Against the Establishment.

After all, ignoring Rand Paul did not work. The attack ads have not worked. Bragging about endorsements from 27 current Kentucky office-holders has not worked. Even trying to turn Rand Paul over to the IRS did not work.

Now we have come full circle.

The original appeal of Grayson is the card he and his handlers are playing now: He is the candidate who is electable.

He’s moderate. He’s safe. He has a good chance to beat the Democrats.

But the “electability” argument is the Carpathia to Trey Grayson’s Titanic.

If the polls (and elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts) have been any indication, it’s that Republican primary voters are tired of Republicans’ abandonment of principles and the back-room deals that personified the Bush administration.

In Tuesday’s Louisville Courier-Journal, lawyer and Mitch McConnell’s court historian John David Dyche used his op-ed to try to get the Republicans to rally around Trey so the party can choose pragmatism over principle and hope that repeating the same mistakes of the past will not yield the same results.

In fact, Rand Paul ought to be thanking John David Dyche. Unknowingly, the Louisville lawyer’s act of sycophancy perfectly articulated the strengths of Dr. Paul’s outsider campaign:

"Dr. Rand Paul says he will not vote for any budget that is not balanced. Secretary of State Trey Grayson rightly responded that Paul's position 'is not practical' and explained why. Now Paul is airing an ad attacking Grayson as if Grayson is altogether opposed to balancing the budget."

Translation: Trey Grayson is in favor of balancing the budget when it’s convenient.

"The idealistic Paul's passion is appealing. He is unlikely to lapse into business-as-usual in Washington. But his rigid ideological positions could render him vulnerable to Democratic defeat this fall and largely irrelevant on Capitol Hill even if he wins. . . .

"Grayson's pragmatism would make him a team player in the clubby Senate. Yet many Republicans see unprincipled deal-making as precisely the problem that got the GOP, and America, into the current mess."

Translation: Please vote for unprincipled deal-making.

Many Republicans rue America's well-intentioned but ill-founded invasion of Iraq. They hear scary echoes of that misadventure in Grayson's tough talk about Iran.

Translation: Please support Grayson so there can be an invasion of Iran that Americans don’t want.

"Over in the pandering party, Democratic candidates contentedly bicker about petty things like housing stipends and stock portfolios. After all, their D.C. destiny would be that of acolyte at the altar of Obama's radical liberal agenda, which polling shows Kentuckians strongly oppose."

Translation: Please ignore polls showing that Rand Paul, who strongly opposes Obama's agenda, is just as strong against the Democrats as Trey Grayson.

Fighting Them Over There So We Can Fight Them . . . Over Here?

Fortunately for New Yorkers, Faisal Shahzad’s plan went up in smoke.

It’s been less than a week since Shahzad entered the national scene with his smoking car in Times Square, but there remain unanswered questions, including one no one wants to ask.

Why would he do this? What were his connections to the Pakistani Taliban? And if this had happened two years ago would Dick Cheney view this attempted terrorist attack by a native Pakistani as justification for invading Iran?

There remains plenty of ambiguity in this case, but one of the certainties is that Shahzad did not fit into our government’s tidy box of terrorist classification.

In the midst of a contentious immigration debate taking place in this country, Shahzad fits the positive stereotype the elites like to project on us for why there should be unrestricted immigration.

Shahzad never hurt anybody. He seemed to have gone about the immigration process in the prescribed way and was awarded citizenship 13 months ago. He went to American universities where he did not cause any trouble. He had his Muslim faith but he must have appeared moderate since nobody was startled by it.

He earned a job as a financial consultant for a marketing firm in Connecticut. He bought a house that was foreclosed a year ago, making his loss in the housing collapse the only probable reason that his economic situation would have given him cause to lash out at his adopted country.

But does anyone believe that Faisal Shahzad, a thirty-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, who earned degrees from American universities in 2000 and 2005, and was a junior financial analyst until one year ago, would have tried to ignite his Nissan Pathfinder were the United States not bombing his native land, an act of undeclared war that was escalated during the past year by President Obama?

All the available evidence in this case points in that direction.

Fighting the terrorists “over there” certainly did not stop Shahzad from trying to fight us over here. The U.S. has been engaged in Afghanistan for nearly nine years and in Iraq for over seven now. He had plenty of opportunity to volunteer for jihad because of those wars while he was enjoying freedom and becoming naturalized. Once drone strikes in Pakistan became more pronounced, this native-born Pakistani decided to take a trip to the old country where, it is assumed at this point, he volunteered himself for the Pakistani Taliban late in 2009.

If this scenario is true, that Shahzad was trying to exact revenge for what was happening to his old country, then wouldn’t extrication from the region remove the incentive for these continual, albeit amateurish bomb plots?

What the U.S. government has to realize is that terrorism is also a home-grown problem. While the Bush administration was trying to hypnotize the country into believing that terrorists are motivated by an inexplicable hatred of freedom, traditionalist conservatives and libertarians pointed out that Americans suffer terrorism over here because we have been over there.

As long as we insist that we have to be “over there,” terrorists will come over here. As Shahzad shows, some of them are already here.

If we see that it is “necessary” to remain “over there,” the price of our presence will be more car bombs like the one set by Faisal Shahzad.

And if some of those are successful, will it occur to anyone in seats of power that fighting them “over there” did not stop them from coming over here?

*

Editorial note: Wes Messamore of The Humble Libertarian has brought me on as a new regular contributor where this essay also appears. Please feel free to read and comment there as well.

Pro-Life Phonies

They weren’t all standing on the stage together but the group of recent endorsers of Trey Grayson’s U.S. Senate campaign would at first glance seem like an entertaining group photo.

In addition to Dick Cheney, Trey Grayson has recently wrangled the endorsements of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Santorum and Dobson are famously pro-life and Giuliani is infamously pro-choice in a party that, he learned, doesn’t nominate pro-choicers for its presidential candidates.

As a senator, Santorum was a poster boy for the pro-life cause. A handsome man with a large family, the Roman Catholic urged the teaching of Intelligent Design be inluded in No Child Left Behind and wrote “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and Common Sense,” a rebuttal to Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village.”

In his endorsement of Trey Grayson, Santorum said,

"Trey Grayson is the only 100% pro-life candidate in this race. I’ve looked at the records and past statements of both candidates on the issue of protecting life, and I’m impressed with Grayson’s conviction and sincerity.”

This might seem like a strong statement, but the former senator hasn’t always used this measuring stick.

In 2004, with then-Republican and always-pro-choice Arlen Specter in a brutal primary fight against then-Congressman Pat Toomey, Santorum and President George W. Bush came to the Keystone State to pull Specter’s chestnuts out of the fire. Now that Specter has prodigally returned to the Democrats, Santorum has endorsed Toomey. Santorum has since apologized for endorsing Specter in 2004, but the only thing the former proved is that even if you yourself are pro-life, you can always support someone who is pro-choice as long as they are a Republican.

In his endorsement, James Dobson said,

“Trey Grayson is the only candidate with the conviction to lead on the issues that matter to Kentucky families. His unwavering commitment to the sanctity of human life and the family resonates with me. I know that he will be a leader on these issues, not just another Senator who checks the box.”

While his organization has done some good work, James Dobson is the one "who checks the box."

Dobson brayed in 2007 that he would support a “minor party candidate” if Giuliani, who was then seen as the frontrunner, won the presidential nomination. When the nominally pro-life John McCain, who voted to confirm Bill Clinton’s abortion-rights defenders to the Supreme Court, won the nomination, Dobson predictably returned to the fold, spurning the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin, whose pro-life views are as bulletproof as the ones Dobson claims to demand of Republicans.

Now back to the image of these three people, Rudy Giuliani, Rick Santorum, and James Dobson all supporting the same candidate, Trey Grayson. The question is this: What brings together people with disagreements on something as vital as whether the taking of an unborn life is murder or not and whether it deserves protection?

Obviously any candidate needs a wide coalition to get elected and that may mean having supporters with varying views on abortion, as bombastic and as intransigent as defenders on both sides of this issue tend to be.

But that still hasn’t answered the question of why Trey Grayson is the one who gets support from alleged pro-life leaders as Rick Santorum and James Dobson as well as pro-choice Republicans like Rudy Giuliani. After all, Grayson’s opponent, Rand Paul is also pro-life. Both candidates have endorsements from pro-life groups. What makes Grayson more pro-life than Rand Paul?

Perhaps the answer is the bazooka-toting elephant in the room.

Seeing that some of these pro-life stalwarts don’t quite live up to their principles, a simpler way to decipher the meanings of these recent endorsements might be found in this list:

1. Rand Paul is pro-life.
2. Trey Grayson is pro-life.
3. Rick Santorum is pro-life.
4. James Dobson is pro-life.
5. Rudy Giuliani is pro-choice.
6. Rand Paul is against the mainstream Republican foreign policy.
7. Trey Grayson is pro-war.
8. Rick Santorum is pro-war.
9. James Dobson is pro-war.
10. Rudy Giuliani is pro-war.
11. Pro-life Rick Santorum, pro-life James Dobson, and pro-choice Rudy Giuliani all endorse pro-life Trey Grayson.
12. Fealty to the status quo GOP foreign policy outranks the pro-life plank.

Update 5/3/2010: According to Politico, James Dobson has reneged his endorsement of Grayson in favor of Rand Paul. It is encouraging to see Dobson change his mind, but take note of his explanation for his initial endorsement of Grayson. Dobson may have inadvertantly revealed Grayson's whole campaign strategy by saying that it wasn't so much an endorsement for Trey Grayson as much as it was an endorsement against Rand Paul.

From Politico:

"Christian conservative leader James Dobson withdrew his endorsement of Kentucky Senate candidate Trey Grayson Monday, switching his support to Rand Paul’s campaign and accusing 'senior members of the GOP' of misleading him about Paul’s record on abortion. . . .

“ 'I was given misleading information about the candidacy of Dr. Rand Paul, who is running in the Republican Primary for the U.S. Senate. Senior members of the GOP told me Dr. Paul is pro-choice and that he opposes many conservative perspectives, so I endorsed his opponent,' Dobson explained."