Month: October 2009

Both Parties Flunk The Gay Issue

Rod Dreher writes:

I can't say that I'm all that surprised over Democratic foot-dragging on gay rights. The Republicans did the same thing when they held all the power in Washington. Back when they held the Senate and the White House, it was the best chance they'd ever have to pass out of the Senate and to the states an amendment to constitutionally define marriage as one man and one woman. The GOP pretty much ran on this in 2004, but when they had their best, and probably last (given the demographic shift in the pipeline) chance to protect traditional marriage in the Constitution, they balked. The president, an Evangelical Christian and social conservative, only gave it half-hearted support, and the Federal Marriage Amendment died in the Senate. The Republican Senate. And now Democrats who care about this issue are discovering what their Republican counterparts on the other side found out: that deep down, neither party establishment wants to deal with this thing. It involves forcing them to make choices they'd rather not make.

I fear he's correct; but this is not necessarily a dreadful thing. Issues like civil rights are not easily translated into swift federal action. They take shape and form in the realm of ideas first, then in culture and society. Soon, they percolate in the courts and popular initiatives, to be played by principle-free opportunists like Rove, and only in the end, make it into federal law. The Democrats, for their part, do not just remember 1993; they remember Johnson. Both analogies are anachronistic. But the fear endures.

Which is why it is so vital to counter that fear with clarity and hope.

The War At Home

Joe Klein tackles Charles Krauthammer’s Weekly Standard essay. Krauthammer writes that "Iraq is a prize–we can debate endlessly whether it was worth the cost–of great strategic significance that the administration seems to have no intention of exploiting in its determination to execute a full and final exit." Klein interjects:

A prize! Sounds sort of like Churchill in his most demented colonial moments: India, the jewel in the crown! (The fact that a duly elected Iraqi government wants us to leave is ignored.) Krauthammer’s sort of imperialism–a brutal and patronizing neo-colonialism–has never sat well with the American people.

This causes Pete Wehner to call Joe Klein insane and Klein thanks Wehner for the clarifying remarks.

Hewitt Award Nominee

"So yes, I hate Obama's America. Because Obama's America isn't America — it's the European view of America, implemented from high office. Opposing the total redefinition of America isn't anti-American; it's patriotic. And opposing those, like Obama, who push for that drastic redefinition, isn't "hating America" — it's fighting in favor of the America that ended slavery, built the greatest economic empire in world history and liberated tens of millions around the globe," – Townhall's Ben Shapiro.

The first black president is antithetical to "the America that ended slavery"?

On The Front Lines With Frontline

Exum highly recommends the newest PBS doc:

John Nagl, Bill Mayville and Stan McChrystal make a good argument for a counterinsurgency campaign, while Andrew Bacevich and an especially pithy Celeste Ward make a good argument against pursuing such a campaign. All sides, in other words, acquit themselves rather well. All sides, that is, save for the Pakistani officials. An American watching this documentary might be of two minds as to whether or not we should pursue a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, but he or she will also be of two minds as to why we continue to send so much money and other resources to a country whose leaders are either lying or delusional about the presence of anti-Government of Afghanistan insurgent groups — such as the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani Network — in Pakistan. The judgment of the documentary’s producers seems to be that Pakistan is more an enemy of the United States than an ally.