Author: Andrew Sullivan

“Perhaps you could take a moment to correct a misconception which you’ve helped promulgate. That is, we’re “Howard Stern Republicans” much more so than “South Park Republicans,” as you have proclaimed. We’ve been around longer than these South Parker johnnie-come-latelies. I thought that Howard’s social importance was finally established with his unique and indispensable coverage of the OJ trial, as well as his two decades of lampooning liberal hypcrisy and bringing to the people a patriotic, often conservative message. Despite this history, despite his important work on 9/11 and since then, and despite Howard’s brief gubernatorial run on the Libertarian ticket, Brian Anderson neglects to mention the self-proclaimed King of all Media in his culture wars pieces. Howard’s been bringing the word to his huge national and highly urban audience for two decades. In closing: Howard Stern’s balls!” – more reader feedback on the Letters Page.

CHARLIE COOK ON MARRIAGE: I think the guy’s onto something when he argues that this will not be a major wedge issue for the religious right in this election season. Here’s why:

Regardless of how they might feel about same-sex marriage, many potential voters might look at the candidate or party stressing the issue and wonder what planet they come from, to dwell on issues like this when far more important priorities are at stake. Whether voters see the war in Iraq as essential to our national security and the fight against terrorism or as an ill-advised quagmire, few people put the gay marriage issue above it on their list of priorities. Then there’s the economy. Some voters see it as finally turning around as a result of the president’s aggressive round of tax cuts. Others see it as faltering, with too many people unemployed or underemployed and the president not doing enough to fix it. Still, jobs and the economy are likely to be more prominent on most people’s radar screens than civil unions or gay marriage.

Last week, it struck me how this issue really didn’t gain much traction in the media. Compared to Iraq, Bush’s visit to Britain, and Michael Jackson, it was fighting for media oxygen. In general, most people don’t want to think about this question. (They should, but that’s another argument). They will blame whoever brings it up. The Massachusetts decision is rightly viewed as a state matter that doesn’t affect most Americans. If the religious right go on the rampage nationally about this, they’ll discover voters may well get turned off.

A heads up for an important new book about the way in which many Americans are still in denial about the extent of Communist espionage and treason during the Cold War. There’s a great interview with the authors on Front Page right now. I’ve been reading the book, and it’s superb.

The latest polls show a 20 point lead for Bush over his Democratic rivals.

Reading the transcript from yesterday’s Democratic debate, I am reminded of why I couldn’t ever be a Democrat. Please spare me the emails calling me a quisling toady sell-out to the gay-hating right. I already get a dozen a day. I can’t get beyond idiotic statements like the following from John Kerry: “If the drug companies win, who’s losing? It’s the seniors!” And people call George W. Bush a moron. Has it occurred to Kerry that the drugs that he wants working tax-payers to give to seniors free only exist because of the drug companies? Does he really think it’s this “zero-sum”? Of course he doesn’t. He’s just demagoguing again. Or this sad exchange, highlighted by Slate’s Will Saletan:

“Gov. Dean raised prescription costs for seniors in his state when he needed to balance the budget. He called himself a ‘balanced-budget freak,’ ” protests John Kerry. On Medicare, Kerry tries to spin Dean: “Are you going to slow the rate of growth? Because that’s a cut.”

Does Kerry really believe that all entitlement programs are sacrosanct – even those that, in a few years, will destroy the country’s fiscal balance or force a huge increase in taxation? At least Howard Dean seems to have said some sensible, brave, fiscally responsible things in the past. But that is now a huge obstacle to winning the nomination. And people wonder why we have soaring debt and deficits. Between Kerry’s entitlement defenses and Bush’s election year bribes, our choice is grim. Where are the grown-ups? (Random observation: Wesley Clark seems to be getting much better as a candidate. He’s the only one who has anything sane to say about Iraq. I disagree with him, but he presents a perfectly coherent argument, and is candid enough to admit the U.N. is not a panacea.)

I’ve been waiting for a conservative take on the popular support for gay marriage in Massachusetts. Now we have one. No, poll numbers are not the same as an actual vote. But the argument that this shoud be opposed because judges are foisting it on an unwilling populace has to be revised. (Bonus rhetorical dig: if a 4-3 decision on gay marriage is judicial tyranny, what is a 5-4 decision resolving a presidential election?)

CORRECTION: “In your essay on Rich and “Angels In America,” you assert that AZT was available as an anticancer drug before it had been used in HIV disease.
Although your contention in no way undermines your essay, it is wrong. AZT was synthesized in 1964 by a scientist, funded by the US government, seeking a cure for cancer. It failed as an anti-cancer drug and was not used again until the AIDS epidemic. I believe a study showing the efficacy of AZT in the treatment of AIDS patients with PCP was published in the New York Times in 1986, and it became commercially available at that time.”

Econopundit takes me to task for worrying about the deficit. Then he runs the numbers on how he thinks the economy would have performed without the tax cut. But he’s debating a straw man. I never said I blamed the tax cut! I love the tax cut. What I blame is the spending increases. Nevertheless, I’m struck that, on his models, the tax cut only marginally helps the economy while doing enormous damage to the deficit. Hmmm. I don’t think he intend to persuade me to be less worried about Dean, but he did. If this is the best the budget-busters can do, I’m unimpressed.

Now is surely the time to bring Turkey into the EU and to reassure them of our solidarity. Their secular state is a critical source of hope for democracy in the Middle East and a vital ally in the war on terror. Here’s a hopeful but grim report in the Guardian:

This was Istanbul’s September 11. They thought they were safe from the war on terror because they thought all Muslims were brothers. Now they know otherwise, and are unified in their condemnation of the terrorists, who cannot be “true Muslims”. The fact that the terrorists staged this attack in the last days of Ramadan has added to their outrage. But no one is in any doubt why the city has become a terrorist target. How its residents respond to their new status depends very much on how much support they get (or fail to get) from the allies who dragged them into this. As one shopkeeper put it, “Surely, now that we have suffered this, the EU must open its arms to us.” If it doesn’t, or if the US gives the impression, as it has sometimes done in the past, that it is taking Turkey’s “sacrifice” for granted, the sense of betrayal could be huge… As we sit drinking coffee around the corner from the British consulate, gazing calmly at yet another high-sided vehicle that could be carrying 500lbs of cheap explosives, my brother has difficulty keeping up the front. No matter how hard he tries, his memories of the first and nearest bomb keep crowding into his mind. The worst part was seeing the dead in the street and recognising their faces. He tells me about the disembodied hand he saw sticking out of a mound of broken glass. He can’t help wondering if this was the hand that detonated the bomb that killed his neighbourhood. “It’s not just politics,” he says. “They’re attacking our way of life.”

Yes, they are. And the fight back has just begun.

Here’s a story that gives you some idea of the huge task still ahead in Iraq. The new recruits to the Iraqi police and civil defense corps are loathed by their fellow-countrymen in the Sunni Triangle. They risk death every day doing their job. Only money keeps them in uniform. How on earth will they become loyal to a new Iraqi government that does not represent Sunni privilege? I don’t know. Here’s my worry, and it can be summed up in a simple dialogue from the piece:

“Their destiny will be the same as it was in Vietnam,” Wathban said. “The Americans left their allies there and they were killed. I think the same will happen here.”

The fact that this can still be believed is deeply worrying. It seems clear now that Saddam has played a simple, clever game: instead of fighting conventionally, he simply withdrew his forces and went into hiding; now he plays a game of guerrilla harassment until the U.S. wearies and pulls out; then he makes another bid for power, in league with Islamists and terrorists of all stripes. In order to keep this from happening, we have to stay in Iraq in considerable numbers for a decade or so. And we have to convince the Iraqis that we mean it. I still don’t believe that this administration is intent on premature withdrawal. But I do know we still have a hell of a job ahead of us – in the Sunni Triangle at least. I know it’s early days yet, but the president needs to speak to the public at some point in ways that acknowledge more deeply the long, hard slog we face. And the huge dangers we have yet to encounter on the way.

DIGGING IN THE IRAQI SAND: Funny what you might find there. Like a whole Russian MiG. I wonder what else they buried.

MORE PALESTINIAN TOYS: It gets better, doesn’t it? Then take a look at the photographs of the mass graves from Saddam’s Iraq. Two sides of the same, awful story.

THE BLOG ANTIDOTE: Reading the New York Times every day. I mean, all the New York Times.

Britain will tomorrow unveil proposed legislation to give gay couples much of the civil protections of heterosexual marriage. The British Tory party has shifted its position to acceptance, and will allow its MPs to vote however they want to on the matter. Their spokesman, Alan Duncan, is himself openly gay (and an old friend from college days). Here is a simple argument in defense of this proposition:

We understand the reservations several Church leaders have expressed about extending this civil union into some sort of pastiche gay marriage, which would be in breach of so much Judaeo-Christian teaching. But that is a religious issue. What is proposed is a civil matter. It is wrong to oppose a sensible and modest civil reform for fear of where it will ultimately lead. Allowing gay people to affirm their relationship within a civil contract does not undermine the institution of marriage. It might even reinforce it. We will all benefit from greater recognition of stable relationships, of whatever kind.

This is from the Daily Telegraph, the most conservative serious newspaper in Britain, in an editorial titled, “Gay couples should be equal under the law.” I’m beginning to feel as if the substance of this issue is now over. In the Weekly Standard, Maggie Gallagher argues against banning civil unions or other such protections for gay couples in a constitutional amendment. We’re left with a dispute over who gets to use the term “marriage.” That debate is worthwhile and important. I want to unify our civil society and strengthen marriage by bringing gays and straights under its single umbrella with a single name. I think that gay members of a family should not be put into a separate holding pen as if their relationships are somehow inferior to their siblings. But it seems to me that the real substantive matter is whether we encourage gay relationships (as opposed to no support for stability among gays) and whether homosexuals are equal under the civil law. A new consensus seems to be forming in defense of both arguments, which is really gratifying. It’s particularly gratifying that many conservatives are finally intent on bringing gay people into the civil architecture of our society.

BART SIMPSONS IN BRITAIN: From the aptly named blog, ourpointlesslives. Sound effects can be found here.

Here’s yet another damning indictment of the Republicans on pork-barrel spending. Yes, it’s produced by the Democrats, but no one is disputing the data. The practice of adding “earmarks” to bills that include pet domestic projects has also exploded under the GOP. Check out the graphic. And this is the minor stuff! Compared the the energy bill and the Medicare expansion, it’s peanuts.