Year: 2005

The latest Peterborough result is another 7 percent swing against Blair. The Tory victory against the Liberal Democrats in Torbay is also very bad news for Blair. If a swing of 6 or 7 percent against Labour continues, then Labour could actually fail to win this election. I repeat: Labour might not win at this point. This is shaping up to be a huge blow against the prime minister. Developing hard …

The first big actual surprise has been in the London constituency, Putney, a tight Conservative-Labour battleground district. The Tories won the seat from Labour on a 6.2 percent swing. It’s worth reiterating: Don’t trust the national exit polls. The constituency-by-constituency battle is what matters. The Putney result suggests a real, big gain for the Tories. But Putney is just one seat. Nevertheless, my gut instinct a week ago may well be right. If Blair’s majority goes below 50, he’ll have to go. This is looking like a real Tory success. Yes, I’m a partisan. I respect and like Blair; but I’m a Tory at heart.

Talking with British friends and reading the papers, the new conventional wisdom is that Blair may do much better today than was expected even a week ago. I’m still unconvinced, but since I’m not there, I may well be wrong. If Labour’s majority goes below 100 seats, it will be a good night for the Tories. I wish the Tories had offered a more decisive alternative to Labour – especially on taxes and spending. They’ve botched several elections without even laying down a clear ideological direction for the party. And the trouble is: their ranks are thin. The younger generation of potential Tory MPs have either emigrated to America, or gone into the private sector, or become depressed about future prospects as a Tory back-bencher, or moved into the Labour camp. The remainder tend to maintain, I’m told, an upper-class aura that still rankles in class conscious Britain. I hope the new CW is wrong – not least because governments with huge majorities often get lazy and undisciplined; and because Britain needs a good opposition, especially if Gordon Brown drags Labour back to the left. Check in later today for reax.

A sane and unfortunately necessary reminder today from George Will.

Jake Weisberg adds an important element of analysis to the question of what on earth has happened to conservatism. The GOP establishment is now exactly like the old Democratic establishment, he argues, catering to various interest groups, and thereby increasing government’s power and reach. He refers to the Cato Institute’s latest paper on Bush’s spending explosion, which I really, really recommend. Jake notes that Cato examined the 101 biggest government programs that the GOP promised to abolish in 1995. Under unified Republican rule, those programs have seen their budgets grow by 27 percent. If you read the Cato paper, you’ll see that Bush’s pretense at mending his ways in his second term are phony; and that the spending explosion goes far beyond defense or homeland security. I keep waiting for conservative outrage. But when you read Jake’s piece, you realize what has really gone on: many of these people are being rewarded by this system. Why would they complain? Thank God for Cato and the handful of principled conservatives left in Washington.

MORE ON CONSERVATISM: The emails keep coming in on my “Crisis of Faith” essay. The debate continues here.

CURRAN ON BENEDICT: A great piece in Commonweal by the theologian then-Ratzinger punished, Charles Curran. (Yes, I’m proud they advertize on this site. I’m linking to the piece because it’s a really persuasive one.)

CAFETERIA CATHOLICISM ON THE RIGHT: I don’t think anyone could consider this NRO piece by David Oderberg as a terribly nuanced work of theology. But he does point out that the late Pope (and his successor) hold many views anathema to the American right. John Paul II went a long way to moving the Catholic position on the death penalty to one of almost outright opposition in all cases (compare that to how swiftly our president signed death warrants in Texas); and he opposed war in almost all circumstances as well (ahem). His push to the extremes on these issues were of a piece with the push to extremes on the end-of-life (defining a feeding tube as not a medical procedure), on women priests (making it impermissible even to discuss the subject) and clerical celibacy and contraception (making these prohibitions the equivalent of “infallible teaching”). John Paul II was not a liberal or a conservative as we understand those terms in secular society. But he was an rigid absolutist, pushing the boundaries of what is mandatory in the body of doctrine known as Catholicism and drastically reducing the space for personal conscience or dissent on lesser moral or prudential matters. The new Pope was deeply involved in this “creeping infallibilism” and attack on conscience and dissent as well. Some argue that the “life” issues are paramount. But isn’t the death penalty a “culture of life” issue? And isn’t war a matter of life and death? The truth is that the late Pope made things just as difficult for conservative Catholics as for liberal ones. Each wing has dissented in its own way, although the liberals have tended to worry more about it. (I didn’t see much hand-wringing at NRO, for example, over the Iraq war. I did see a lot of invective directed toward the Vatican.) My own view is that dissent on some moral teachings is perfectly compatible with being a Catholic, as long as you don’t differ on the central tenets. What John Paul II and Benedict XVI have done is drastically increase the scope and content of those central tenets until there’s little oxygen left for conscience, dissent or theological freedom. That was and is the problem. Only more oxygen will allow the church to breathe and grow. Conservatives and liberals would benefit from the debate.

Finally gets his come-uppance. It does, I think, behoove us to acknowledge that the Bush team’s war on al Qaeda has been bearing fruit. They deserve our praise as well as criticism. And this guy looks like one of “Team America’s” under-cover actor-spies.

Here’s a taut response to Jonah Goldberg’s post about my brief discussion of some common themes between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. Money quote from my defender:

This is what Christian and Islamic fundamentalism have most in common: an open hostility to pluralism, to the idea that government should operate as if the ways and beliefs of others were as legitimate as their own. In this sense, Sullivan is right that hatred of homosexuality is intrinsic to Christian and Islamic fundamentalism. The struggle against Islamic fundamentalism may not be “about” homosexuality, just as the struggle against Christian fundamentalism is not “about” abortion. These just happen to be two issues upon which democratic pluralists and religious fundamentalists cannot and very likely will not agree, and where the war between the partisans of government by consent and the partisans of government by divine diktat will continue to be fought.

Just to clarify: I wrote “Christian fundamentalism” not Christianity; and I wrote “open and proud homosexuality”, not just homosexuality. I completely agree that the murderous threat of Islamist fundamentalism is far graver than the threat of Christian fundamentalism. (Although it’s worth noting that America’s recent domestic terrorism has come from the extreme right, and that Erik Rudolph, a Christian fundamentalist terrorist, specifically targeted gays for murder.) But I also believe that the war against Islamic fundamentalism is indeed linked to the struggle against similar extremists within Christianity. We are in a global war for secular society, in which the search for religious truth is and must be protected but religious truth is not and must not be the basis of a political order. The external enemies of such secularism are far worse than the internal ones. But their ultimate mindset remains the same. It has always struck me as odd that some of those most opposed to Islamist fundamentalism are completely untroubled by the Christian variety. Or maybe Hitch and I are the only ones to see a connection.

That’s one view of the Brit election tomorrow:

Assuming Labour wins, it will be the seventh victory in a row for Margaret Thatcher. It will deliver her a round 30 years of supremacy over British government, equalling the epoch of Attlee’s welfare socialism after 1945. Labour’s manifesto is a Thatcherite classic: adventurism abroad and progressive privatisation at home, moral partiality bolted on to an ever-expanding nanny State. The consensus is well illustrated in the near-identical proposals for public services from Labour and Conservatives. Both have pandered to middle-class insecurity. They have used fear, crime, discipline and control as leitmotifs and promised to curb civil liberty and make the welfare state increasingly optional. Baroness Thatcher may have disappeared to Venice for the duration, but she can look back on this campaign with pride. She destroyed the Social Democrats, she destroyed old Labour and, in stimulating the creation of new Labour, she has all but destroyed the Tories.

The key test of political longevity is whether your political opponents eventually adopt your new consensus. The only flaw in this reasoning is that Simon Jenkins misses the premiership of John Major. If the Tories had not won their post-Thatcher victory, Blair would never have emerged to save Labour. It was Major who reconciled the country to Thatcherism – by winning an election as a Tory who was not Thatcher. For what it’s worth: I’d vote Tory this time. Blair will win anyway. But his creeping expansion of the welfare state must be resisted and reversed. Another Labour victory might just convince the Tories to go back to advocating much lower taxation, a smaller state and far more decentralization. Here’s hoping.

Item One: I’d say it’s pretty obvious that Michael Jackson will be found ‘not guilty’ at this point, which is not, of course, the same as innocent. Making a jury decision on this horrendously prosecuted case doesn’t strike me as that hard. But when I ask myself what I think he may actually have done, I just don’t know. I’m horrified by any sexual exploitation – even of a minimal kind – of a child. But every time I try and think of the minutiae of the Jackson case, I just feel nauseated and mentally change the subject. One thing is obvious: Jackson is psychologically damaged in ways I cannot even begin to understand. Item Two: Paula Abdul did something very dumb and unethical. She should quit the show. Item Three: the boyfriend and I rented “Meet The Fockers” the other night. About as bad a movie as I have seen in years. We saw “The Interpreter” last night. Highly recommended, grown-up cinema. You know: what used to be the norm.

Another explanation for the red-blue divide.

GOD, MAN AND JONAH: The conservatism-of-doubt debate continues here.

THE DUTCH CONFLICT: A good friend of mine dares to walk hand in hand with his boyfriend in Amsterdam. Yes, Amsterdam. A “Moroccan-looking” guy with a heavy accent spits at him in the face, mutters something about “fucking fags”, and then a small gang beats him up. His story is here, including a picture of his bloodied face. Hatred of open and proud homosexuals is intrinsic to Islamist fundamentalism, as it is to Christian fundamentalism. The struggle against both is the same one – at home and abroad.

FUNDAMENTALIST WATCH I: Pat Robertson calls judges he disagrees with a greater threat than al Qaeda. We’re now told Robertson represents very few members of the religious right. So why haven’t they denounced him? The establishment fundamentalist, Bob Knight, meanwhile equates the movement for gay equality with the “criminalization of Christianity.” The voice of Republican reason.

FUNDAMENTALIST WATCH II: The evangelicals’ distrust of science deepens. They are especially opposed to successful vaccines for venereal diseases. Such vaccines might encourage … sex! New Scientist has the details on evangelical opposition to LPV vaccine research that could save countless lives, especially in the developing world.

POLLING ON MARRIAGE: There has, I think, been some turbulence in the national polling over the last year on marriage rights, as Maggie Gallagher points out. This is perhaps understandable. Opposition to equal rights (or any rights) for gay couples in this respect is now a key plank of one political party, and has been amplified by a coordinated campaign against them (including the presidential bully pulpit), using churches, pastors and all sorts of venues to push the message. That’s democracy. Those of us who believe gay couples should be supported in their responsibility; who believe that greater social stability among gays will help heterosexual marriage; who believe that families should include all their members in the same rites and responsibilities; who believe that this country is big enough to allow diversity on this issue among the states rather than a single imposition of a minority view; we need to keep up the debate. Nevertheless, it’s striking that a clear majority of the country in all polls supports some legal protection for gay couples via civil unions or civil marriage – exactly the position that would be made impossible by the federal marriage amendment. Still, even then, Maggie is cherry-picking. She writes:

The ABC News/Washington Post poll (“Do you think it should be legal or illegal for homosexual couples to get married?”) found that in September 2003, Americans opposed gay marriage 55 percent to 37 percent. In the August 2004 poll opposition had climbed to 62 percent opposed to 32 percent in favor of SSM.

This is, er, misleading. Those numbers count supporters of civil unions as the same as those opposed to all legal protections. It’s also out of date. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll (April 2005) finds that 40 percent want to forbid any legal protections for gay couples, while 27 percent favor civil marriage rights and 29 percent favor civil unions (a combined 56 percent majority for some kind of civil union). In the same poll, the anti-gay-union Amendment gets between 39 and 44 percent support, depending on the phrasing, and between 53 and 56 percent opposition. In fact, this poll shows a decline in support for an amendment over the last year: support went from 44 percent to 39 percent. Support for the federalist solution went from 51 to 56 percent. I guess you now know why Maggie’s study omits the most recent data.