Old Dish – Page 311

WHO THE BLOGGERS ARE

Here’s a WSJ round-up of the bloggers at the DNC convention. When I started this blog over four years ago – yes, when Clinton was president and 9/11 was unimaginable – it never occurred to me that this new media methodology would take off quite as quickly as it has. Good for all of them.

LIBERTARIANS FOR BUSH??

Another reader chimes in:

I don’t know how the reader whose letter you posted can see Bush as in any way libertarian. Does s/he not remember the state of the union address where he called for mandatory drug testing for high school students? Does s/he not remember that he federalized crime by signing the partial birth abortion ban? Does s/he not remember that he favors state intervention into a woman’s womb, or that he was appalled by the Lawrence decision or favored sodomy laws while Governor of Texas? Does s/he not think that anti-smoking laws are just as much products of the puritan right as of the politically correct left? Did s/he not notice that Bush was itching to re-up the assault rifle ban? Or that he has used federal dollars for “faith based initiatives” which could impede both the establishment clause as well as the equal protection clause when homos are able to be disriminated against? Where in anything that Bush has done is the spirit of John Stuart Mill, John Locke or Ronald Reagan?

I’m with this guy. Bush, of course, never pretended to be much of a small government libertarian type, and he shouldn’t be blamed for misrepresenting himself. But he has certainly disappointed that wing of the party more profoundly than anyone I know expected.

MILLY KONDRACKE

A moving tribute.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY

Well, if I reprint it, Reuters won’t get the full credit.

BBC VERSUS LANCE ARMSTRONG

The anti-Americanism even infects the sports coverage.

ADVICE FOR TERESA

Courtesy of Charles Dickens.

KERRY AND LANGSTON HUGHES: He’s edited a book of Hughes’ poetry as a tie-in for the election. Noah has the details.

LIBERTARIANS FOR BUSH: A reader writes in:

You posed the question “Why would libertarians vote for Bush?” Well, I hold many libertarian views, hate the war on drugs, and yet support Bush emphatically. Why? Well, I don’t think the left will do anything to remediate the drug problem right now (to be fair, they can’t without getting whacked). But the left does and will support infringements such as anti-smoking laws, seatbelt laws, hate crime laws (and maybe hate speech laws soon?) and so on. I assert that, overall, the much greater threats to our civil liberties emanate from the left.
Furthermore, the left will infringe upon us with ever greater spending, ever spiraling entitlement programs, and ever more punitive taxation. If you believe that a Kerry administration will reduce the deficit, I think you must be smoking some of that “stronger” pot! Income taxes are regressive and damaging to productivity and personal incentive, not to mention a blatant and expensive method of redistributing wealth.

I guess my problem with this is that it would be extremely hard to raise spending and borrowing as swiftly as Bush has and I simply do not trust him to restrain spending in the second term. He clearly doesn’t care about the size of government, unless attacking it wins him votes. I don’t see much difference between Bush Republicanism and Kerry liberalism on nanny-state issues – Bush is a strong supporter of hate crime laws, for example, (except for the gays, who are uniquely excluded from such protections). I guess I believe that supporting a Republican who is anathema to libertarian conservatives is a bad thing in general. But, hey, it’s not as if Kerry is that great either.

NOT SO STRONG: The new super-pot notion is rebutted – at least in Britain.

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KERRY’S TO LOSE

This week strikes me as easily the most important week for the Kerry candidacy. The voters who will decide this election have already, I think, made up their minds that they could live without a second Bush term. This is not because they necessarily hate Bush (many don’t, including me); nor because they believe that his war and economic policies have been failures (again, I think the record is mixed); but because his conduct of the war in the last year has been wracked with error and hubris, and his economic policy relies upon tax cuts that we simply cannot afford with the kind of spending levels Bush has also enacted. I think it’s also clear that, in so far as some swing voters are libertarian in outlook, Bush has shown his authoritarian, anti-federalist colors. This administration is uninterested in restraining government power, in balancing the budget, in winning over opponents (as opposed to sliming them), and in allowing people to live their own lives free from government moralism. There is not even a sliver of daylight between the White House and the religious right in social policy. This isn’t what we were told before the last election; and it isn’t what many of us hoped for. But it remains the case that Bush’s determination to defeat Jihadist terror is beyond much doubt, even if his methods seem often strained by incompetence, recklessness and arrogance. So Kerry has a great opportunity to win over the undecideds over this week, and if he cannot take advantage of it, he will reveal himself unworthy of the office he seeks.

WHAT KERRY MUST SAY: The most important task of this convention is to persuade Americans that a future Democratic administration will fight this country’s enemies with a passion and energy and consistency at least comparable to Bush’s. If Kerry doesn’t make this a centerpiece of his speech, he deserves to lose. He needs a passage that goes something like this:

Let me now address those in the world who believe that the United States, under a Democratic president, will cower before terror or respond to any future attacks with passivity and weakness. Nothing could be further from the truth. As president, I will pursue this country’s real enemies every day I am in the Oval Office; I will seek them out and bring them to justice; I will ensure that our historic duty to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq is met in full, however long it takes, however hard the task. To the murderers of al Qaeda, let me say this. Do not even begin to interpret a Democratic victory as some sign that we will acquiesce to your murderous intent and nihilist politics. In the war against Jihadism, there is no Democrat or Republican. There is simply American. We will unite to defeat you and to secure our country.

Am I dreaming? I don’t know. If Kerry bores on about healthcare or taxes without focusing on terror, then he will richly deserve to lose. Unlike some, I’m open to persuasion. This war is far too important to be left to one party. The 9/11 Commission was an important reminder that we can indeed work together to find a way forward against the dire threat we still face. And it is indeed a failure that this president, far from uniting the country behind this war, has served to divide it more deeply. He may, however, be the best we have on offer. This week will go a long way toward resolving that question.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

“9/11 has taught us that terrorism against American interests ‘over there’ should be regarded just as we regard terrorism against America ‘over here.’ In this same sense, the American homeland is the planet. But the enemy is not just ‘terrorism,’ some generic evil. This vagueness blurs the strategy. The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more specific. It is the threat posed by Islamist terrorism – especially the al Qaeda network, its affiliates, and its ideology.
As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world-against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the ‘head of the snake,’ and it must be converted or destroyed.
It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground – not even respect for life – on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.” – one of the most moving and powerful passages in the remarkably good 9/11 Commission Report. It bears a great deal of similarity to the argument I made three years ago, in “This Is A Religious War.”

KERRYPALOOZAH: Three new pieces on the Kerry campaign are now posted. Here’s my TNR fisking of Kerry’s speech introducing Edwards. Here’s my worry about Kerry’s gay politics, from the recent Advocate. Here’s my latest Sunday Times column on the conservative appeal of Kerry, given the radicalism and recklessness of the past three and a half years. Lastly, here’s my Time column on Bush’s exploitation of marriage to shore up his base. Enjoy. Or not, as the case may be.

STALEMATE IN RAMADI

A useful account of the current stand-off against the Iraqi insurgents – in the critical Sunni town of Ramadi.

“HITLER’S BLOG”: The biased Daschle-buddy, who edits the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, lets it rip again – against those pesky bloggers.

GOING AFTER SOFT DRUGS: Bush is apparently now ratcheting up the war on soft drugs, ordering “that resources be allocated to fighting so-called ‘soft’ drugs instead of concentrating on harder forms, such as heroin and cocaine.” The problem, according to the administration, is that marijuana is now more potent than in the past. i.e. more people are experiencing higher levels of pleasure. There’s no evidence they’re hurting anyone else – or even that they’re hurting themselves. But pleasure itself is an evil for some of these busy-bodies. Remind me why libertarians should support Bush again, will you?