Category: Old Dish

CORRUPTION AND CONSERVATISM

In one sense, the current bout of corruption in Washington is explicable enough: politicians, Democrat or Republican, who hold power long anough succumb to its temptations. But in another, it’s a function of the degeneracy of Bush-DeLay conservatism. When conservatives have embraced big government, massive increases in spending, huge new entitlements, a blizzard of earmarks, and an increasingly complex tax code, they have merely increased the incentives for sleaze. As David Broder also points out, some states – Texas stands out, as do many other parts of the South – have a very long history of federal government largess, cronyism and back-door quid pro quos. All we’re seeing is a shameless political culture being nationalized. That used to be LBJ’s mojo. Now, it’s DeLay’s.

QUOTES FOR THE DAY: “Bremer also said he raised his concerns with Bush at a lunch that month and again in June 2003 in a video link with a National Security Council meeting chaired by Bush. ‘I was trying to reach the president’s ear, because I had the impression that the armed services, and possibly Rumsfeld himself, were in a hurry to get our troops home,’ he writes in the book, ‘My Year in Iraq,” … In a memo dated May 18, 2004, Bremer urged Rumsfeld to send more troops. ‘We were trying to cover too many fronts with too few resources,’ attempting to control borders, secure convoy routes and protect Iraq’s infrastructure, Bremer states in his book. ‘We’ve become the worst of all things – an ineffective occupier,’ he says he told Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser.” – Washington Post, yesterday.

“The president said at a National Security Council meeting that he depended on Bremer for a candid assessment of the state of affairs in Iraq. ‘If Bremer’s happy, I’m happy,’ Bush said. ‘If Bremer’s nervous, I’m nervous. If Bremer’s uneasy, I’m uneasy. If Bremer’s optimistic, I’m optimistic.'” – Fred Barnes, in his forthcoming hagiography of the president, “Rebel-In-Chief,” page 100.

What are the odds that Fred’s source for the NSA meeting was not Bremer?

MOHLER AND ROBERTSON: I asked readers to prove me wrong about a major religious right leader dissenting from Pat Robertson’s view that the End-Time will lead to a rapture of the faithful and destruction of the unfaithful; and that God intervenes directly in our lives ot punish sin. Here’s Albert Mohler with a more nuanced position:

God created the world as the theater of His own glory. It is a world of great beauty and wonder; a world that allows crops to grow and provides everything that we physically need. Yet, it is also a world of terrible storms and natural disasters. In part, all this is the result of the devastating effects of human sin. As the Apostle Paul makes clear, the whole creation anticipates the redemption that is to come. But, as we experience the reality of weather after the Fall, we should not trace any particular weather pattern to contemporary human sins. Jesus explained that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The weather is not fair.

Mohler differs from Robertson in not seeing a specific weather event as God-induced. But he shares with him the notion that all bad things in the universe stem in part from human sin.

– posted by Andrew.

DIVIDING ISRAEL

A reader writes:

To quote David Barry, I swear, I am not making this up.

A few years ago, I was sitting in the galley of the Naval Training Center in Illinois. There was a television playing CNN headline news. The program gave the results of a poll about Americans’ views regarding the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. I forget the exact numbers as to which side people supported, but what struck me was a second poll – if you support Israel, why? As I recall, the plurality said they supported Israel because of terrorism, but a pretty substantial majority said they supported Israel because of its “biblical claim to the land”. Perhaps inadvertently, I scoffed slightly. Another sailor asked me what I was thinking, and when I told him, he said something to the effect of, “What’s wrong with that? Unless you don’t believe in the Bible …”

Mr. Sullivan, I had a fairly decent Christian education. So I retorted something like, “Why do they have a claim? Because God promised the land to Abraham? Well, Abraham had 8 sons. Why are you going with the second son? Okay, fine, let’s take Isaac. He had two sons – why do you give the whole land to the second son? Well, fine, let’s take Jacob. There were 13 tribes of Israel (everyone forgets Levi) – why are you only counting Judah for the whole land? Surely Tel Aviv wasn’t part of the original tribe of Judah. But, okay, let’s take Judah. Well, didn’t the Babylonian captivity pretty much end the Jewish claim to the land? Didn’t Jesus say that he could raise children of Abraham from the stones, that being a child of Abraham didn’t count for much?” The guy I was talking to paused for a second, then said, “Wow. You’re gay, aren’t you?”

Yes, I probably was playing a bit fast and loose with those biblical references. It was 5:30 am – what do you want from me?

I wonder if there is a poll out there explaining American attitudes toward Israel along these lines. Let me know.

IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

Or maybe it isn’t. There’s plenty of good stuff in the latest Atlantic, for those wise enough to subscribe – Paul Elie on the papal election, Caitlin Flanagan on oral sex – but perhaps the most fascinating piece is from Ben Schwarz, writing on the potential demise of mutually assured destruction. We’ve known for a while that our nuclear supremacy has been increasing since the end of the Cold War, as our arsenal improves, Russia’s military decays, and China’s remains static. But now there’s evidence that our supremacy is so great that we could, for the first time, actually win a nuclear war outright by destroying the enemy’s entire arsenal in a first strike. Or at least that’s the conclusion of a forthcoming RAND study, cited by Schwarz. Here’s what it found:

In a feat of technical sophistication and strategic insight, [the authors] have modeled a U.S. first strike against Russia. (Although China is Washington’s most probable great-power rival, the authors argue, Russia presents a “hard case” for their contention that America has achieved nuclear ascendancy.) That model, which they presented at the Council on Foreign Relations in October, has been vetted by most of the top civilian defense analysts. To be conservative, it assumes that U.S. nuclear weapons will perform with much less accuracy and reliability than should be expected. Even so, the authors conclude, a U.S. attack today would destroy the entire Russian nuclear arsenal. To grossly oversimplify: the erosion of Russian capabilities, combined with new, overwhelming warhead yields and the “accuracy revolution” in U.S. nuclear forces, has largely obviated the problems of “fratricide” (the prospect that U.S. missiles on the attack would destroy each other, leaving their targets safe) that once helped make a disarming strike impossible to achieve.

Schwarz’s piece is primarily about the dangers associated with this imbalance. Since “Moscow and Beijing will surely buy deterrence by spreading out their nuclear forces, decentralizing their command-and-control systems, and implementing ‘launch on warning’ policies,” he argues, there’s a greater chance that a future crisis will spiral out of control, leading to “the unauthorized or accidental use of nuclear weapons.”

This is a serious concern, and I hope that I don’t minimize it when I say that my initial, gut-level, Cold-War-geek reaction to this news can be summed up in just one word: cool.

– posted by Ross

FROM THE HEARTLAND

A bumper crop of emails recently, weighing in on fundamentalism, the heartland and “Brokeback Mountain”. Here are three with good points:

Thanks to ‘Variety’ for perpetuating the fly-over/red-state stereotypes. I have to say, for those of us in Des Moines, Brokeback’s strong opening here is not a surprise. I imagine it will do well and continue to do well because it’s a beautifully powerful film, well-reviewed, and hyped as controversial. The movie release has been managed well and the expectations set, masterfully drawing people into theaters. My opening night experience in Des Moines was in a suburban theater and the audience was primarily middle-age couples, young women and a large (but not-the-majority) gay contingent.

As far as the opposition goes, it’s just not there or just not organized. And call me bitter blue in a red state, but the political/cultural context of Iowa (and Des Moines in particular) is nowhere comparable to Texas or Oklahoma. The strength and emotional force of the Christian Coalition (and the anti-gay forces) in the state is nowhere near that of OK or TX. Largely, Iowans keep to themselves as a whole and can’t be bothered. It’s the educated, quietly patriotic, thoughtful side of our agricultural past coming through.

Point taken. There’s a huge difference between the culture of the Mid-West and the South. But even many Texans seem open-minded about “Brokeback.” Another reader sets me, er, straight on that one:

I was born and raised in Texas, not far from where Jack “lived” in Texas. In my twenties, I lived all over the state: San Angelo, Odessa, Lubbock, Dallas, Houston, and Austin.
I spent nearly 5 years in Lubbock where I met my best friend and his wife, both ardent Republicans. I shared a house with him and his cousin who was a cowboy and a bouncer at a local honky tonk. Both knew I was gay and couldn’t have cared less. I have always said that the libertarian streak in west Texans outweighs any social conservatism and I stand by that assertion to this day. I never recall hearing of any fag bashings while I lived in that part of the state. They occurred often in Dallas while I lived there and I was the victim of two of them.
Lubbock is the only place in Texas where I never experienced any, and I mean, any homophobia. That the movie is a success there doesn’t surprise me at all.

That just goes to show that generalizations even about one state are fraught with peril.

FUNDAMENTALISM DEFINED: My depiction of fundamentalist millenarianism also comes in for criticism from this reader:

So “most members” of the “religious right” believe that the world is on the brink of the rapture and coming to and end, and exactly how do you know this to be true? I can garauntee you that if you knew me, you would list me too as a member of your so-called “religious right”, and yet I think Pat Robertson’s eschatalogical views are absurd and I deplore his recent comments regarding Sharon. Pat Robertson and his like on evangelical TV would do themselves, and me personally, a HUGE favor if they would stick to their (and mine) Christ-sponsored mission of spreading the good news of Christ’s love, forgiveness and ultimate sacrifice, rather than indulging in every political foray of the day. And you, my dear blogger, would do yourself a favor to either get to personally know a few more conservative-evangelical Christians (like me).

I’m sure there are many Christians who share the reader’s view of the priority of love and forgiveness – rather than vengeance and violence – at the center of the Christian Gospel. And many vote Republican. But my point about Robertson was a narrower one. It is that he believes that there is a looming End-Time in which judgment will be passed on non-believers, and also that God intervenes directly in the lives of people right now to punish and warn. How do I know this? Because there’s plenty of explicit evidence proving it. For the book, I’ve been steeping myself in Protestant fundamentalist texts, and the prevalence of these themes is overwhelming. In the past few years, many leaders of the religious right have reiterated those views, whether it’s James Dobson’s warning about the imminent “destruction of the earth” caused by gay couples getting married, or Jerry Falwell blaming feminists for 9/11, or Franklin Graham blaming New Orleanians for Hurricane Katrina. If a reader can show me a leader of the religious right who does not believe in millenarianism or a God who directly intervenes to punish sinners, and can prove it, I will gladly post their evidence. Please prove me wrong. To discuss these theological views, by the way, is not to be a “hater” or “demonizer,” as Jonah Goldberg claims. It is simply to reveal what religious right leaders clearly and unapologetically believe.

– posted by Andrew.

RAMBO AND RELIGION

At the end of a TPMCafe post bemoaning the failure of Dems to adequately take advantage of the Abramoff scandal, we get this revealing reflection:

When we get tarred with the same brush every time the Republicans screw up, we can never separate ourselves from them in the voter’s minds. That leaves the voters deciding their votes only on quasi-religious, and Rambo grounds, and we will never win on those grounds.

I’m not sure, at least in my more cynical moods, that this is necessarily an inaccurate portrait of the modal American voter—responsive only to scandal and tribal instincts—but telegraphing that attitude may have something to do with why “we will never win on those grounds.”

—posted by Julian

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

“Until the Bush administration, with its incontinent spending, unleashed an especially conscienceless Republican control of both political branches, conservatives pretended to believe in limited government. The last five years, during which the number of registered lobbyists more than doubled, have proved that, for some Republicans, conservative virtue was merely the absence of opportunity for vice.” – George Will, on great form today. Thank God he and David Brooks are still around, and still calling it like it is.

– posted by Andrew.