Month: November 2006

A reader sees Lincoln as the model for how the two deep human impulses can properly interact in a statesman:

Lincoln pursued relentlessly a war that left half a million of his countrymen dead and half the country in ruins. He did this first to preserve American democracy and then to abolish slavery. Thus he would seem to fit Jonah Goldberg’s model of a leader who, like FDR and King, realized that "evil is rarely defeated by people who are unsure they are right."

But Lincoln always tempered his personal convictions with Socratic doubt and scientific skepticism. Despite his almost religious attachment to the Union he still wrote of it with scientific detachment, describing it as "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…" and the war an experiment "testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

When he wrote "if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," slavery is presented as the worst of wrongs, but only if right and wrong have meaning. He thinks they do, but he must consider the possibility that they do not.

Everything about Lincoln’s words and action speak of a man deeply convinced that slavery is wrong and an affront to God. Yet he also knows, because he is a man who thinks as well as acts, that the conviction that one is right and that one knows God’s will more often has been a curse than a blessing. One must act on one’s convictions, especially if one is the President, but one must also remember how fallible they can be. Hence, when he sums up the great conflict for which he, more than anyone else bore responsibility, it contained not only conviction and justification but also, for himself and his countrymen, reminders of the need for doubt even as one acts:

"Both [sides] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in …"

In the Guardian, alas. The hard left’s dislike of liberty runs deep. And, yes, it’s possible to be dismayed at the conduct of the war in Iraq and yet still be glad that Saddam is no longer in power.

A reader writes:

Thanks for your observation regarding Mr. Savage’s comments. They are nearly prescient. Just last night, I was listening to Mr. Savage while I was working in my shop, and I had the same thought: Substitute Jew for homosexual (or liberal) in his diatribe(s) and you have the ravings of Hitler.

I used to think of myself as a conservative. I don’t know where these people came from, but after listening to rabid radio for a while I have become totally turned off on "conservatism’s" message. They are so hateful. I don’t understand their objective, but it certainly turned me away from any support for the Republicans and as such it appears counterproductive. Now, I only listen occasionally in order to know the enemy.

From a supportive, healthy heterosexual in Montana.

There is something deeply Orwellian about the current state of the right. If you ask them what they’re for, you tend to get platitudes. But ask them what they’re against and their eyes and keyboards light up. (This is true on the far left, of course, as well. But the ideological rigor mortis on the right is particularly striking right now). On the Hill, you have the nemeses of Pelosi, Rangel and Frank, the same trio, repeated endlessly. Is it really an accident that they have picked a woman, a black and a gay? Naah. What is Sean Hannity’s mojo? Try this for size:

"To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed…"

As for the vitriol thrown in my direction, I may be becoming a useful Emmanuel Goldstein figure for the "movement." Here’s the latest Two Minutes Hate from JPod.

In the WSJ no less!

"Ignore 99% of what [Ryan] Sager says and writes. He’s a Kevin Phillips in the making," РBryan Preston, pulling a Jonah on policing conservative debate.

Even Preston’s own readers ignore him. Sager responds here.

I’m no good at math, as readers have constantly had to point out. But among the many suggestions I’ve received on how to ameliorate the gerry-mandering problen, the tantalizing possibility of redistricting by a neutral computer program seems to me to be among the most promising. Here’s a web-page that presents various options that would take the process of redistricting out of the hands of partisans and into a completely neutral computer algorithm. The criteria used can be debated on a state by state level. But geographical contiguity, equality in population, and compactness are the top three. Avoiding gratuitous racial discrimination should also play a role. But the point is: you fight over the criteria and the weight given to them; then you let the computer do the rest with census data.

To see what might happen, here’s a map of North Carolina’s districts:

Now, here’s a new electoral map drawn by a computer, with a particular set of algorithms plugged in:

I know which one I prefer. There are still some vagaries. Given certain criteria, computers can come up with a variety of solutions, and there’s a danger that one political party in power might keep running the computer to get their preferred result. One way of dealing with this might be to require a super-majority in state legislatures to approve the new computer-driven districts to ensure that both parties have some buy-in leverage. Another way is to do what Iowa does and hand over redistricting power to a neutral body, separate from but answerable to the legislature.

We’ve come to accept the census-mandated, computer-driven reapportionment every ten years or so. Why not let computers do the other heavy-lifting to define the boundaries of the actual districts? This is the twenty-first century. There’s no reason we shouldn’t use computer power to improve democracy.

Malkin rounds up the GOP base reax. Not so good. Lott’s a big spender; Martinez is soft on immigrants. And so the Republicans fracture some more …

Mixed feelings from someone who once worked for him. Enthusiasm from someone who just heard him speak in Canada.

One of Fernando Botero’s paintings of the results of Bush’s torture and abuse policy in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A gallery and commentary can be found at Slate.

"And I want to tell you something, and I’m going to say it to you loud and clear. The radical homosexual agenda will not stop until religion is outlawed in this country. Make no mistake about it. They’re all not nice decorators. You better get it through your head before it’s too late. They threaten your very survival. They went after the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is now caving into the homosexual mafia. They will not stop until they force their agenda down your throats. Gay marriage is just the tip of the iceberg. They want full and total subjugation of this society to their agenda. Now, if you want that and if you don’t think it’s a threat — believe me, that is what’s going to occur in this country," – radio talk-show host, Michael Savage, with 8 million listeners daily.

Substitute the word "Jew" for "homosexual" and see how it reads.