The Dish

Just read this story about the Texas Republican Party. Their convention began with prayers and invocations, as any religious gathering might do. One pastor who spoke to the group said the following: “Give us Christians in America who are more wholehearted, more committed and more militant for you and your kingdom than any fanatical Islamic terrorists are for death and destruction. I want to be one of those Christians.” Then read the platform, proposing, among other things, “new restrictions on lawsuits brought over exposure to asbestos” and making it a felony for anyone to perform a marriage for a same-sex couple. If you want to know why someone who loved Ronald Reagan can no longer support the Republican Party, then the extremism of George W. Bush’s own party in his home state is Exhibit A. Republicans who say that these people do not represent the GOP as a whole can prove this by taking them on. But they won’t, will they? They never do.

BUSH HATRED WATCH: “[T]he hegemonic grim spirit of the age being incarnate in our thought-disordered bloody, greedy, little plutocrat-slash-soulless-theocrat of an unelected President,” – Tony Kushner, playwright, New York Times.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren’t immediately appointed to it, you’d know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” – Michael Feingold, in the Village Voice.

“I think it is very interesting when you reread the history of the late Thirties and the Second World War, the degree to which there was a very big disagreement between people as to how to deal with the Nazi threat. Not disagreement that it was a threat, but how to deal with it. And it seems almost extraordinary to us now that there were people arguing throughout the 1930s that actually the way to deal with Hitler was to make a gesture of disarmament. Now we look back and say, ‘How on earth could anyone have thought that was sensible?’ But that was for a time in fact the predominant view.
The second thing is how big a gamble politically President Roosevelt was taking in committing America, first of all to helping, and then to committing forces. It is sometimes forgotten that in the prewar presidential elections each of the candidates had to line up and say, ‘on no account will we get drawn into any European conflict’. And that’s why this transatlantic alliance is felt so keenly on their side as well as ours.” – Tony Blair, understanding how the Anglo-American alliance is as critical to the survival of freedom today as it was sixty years ago.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: “The last war showed only too clearly that we can have no faith in imperialist crusades to bring freedom to any people. Our entry into the war, under the slogan “Stop Hitler!” would actually result in the immediate introduction of totalitarianism over here … The American people can best help [the German people] by fighting at home to keep their own liberties.” – John Dewey, William Carlos Williams, Meyer Schapiro, and other leading American intellectuals, in Partisan Review, Fall 1939. (Thanks to David Gelernter in the Wall Street Journal.) Reads just like the New York Review of Books today, doesn’t it?

SACRED INSTITUTION WATCH: J-Lo gets hitched again. It’s her third exercise of her civil rights, and she’s only 34. Her husband just got a divorce from his previous wife last Monday. The heterosexual lifestyle is destroying marriage, isn’t it?

“I hope you will forgive this sentimental note. I have been greatly saddened by the death of President Reagan and felt the need to commemorate his passing by writing a few lines in his memory. Having grown up in communist Czechoslovakia, I have seen, first hand, the material and, more importantly, spiritual devastation that socialism brings. Generations of people in Eastern Europe were impoverished and their morality and sense of self-worth annihilated by a corrupt, inherently dishonest and tyrannical value system. Thanks to Reagan, people like me were set free at a young age. Untainted by socialism, we were allowed our most basic right – to pursue happiness in a place and manner of our choosing. But, it did not have to happen that way! Were the Soviet bloc allowed to continue in its miserable existence for another two decades, my generation would have morphed into that great-gray mass of people that the historians write off as ‘lost.’ It is not a hyperbole to say that Reagan gave us our freedom and for that I am eternally thankful.” – from a Czech friend. The battle against socialism continues, of course. In this country and around the world.

If you want to see how depraved the far left has become, read this disgusting thread on Democratic Underground. I wish I could be surprised. Meanwhile, at an ANSWER march – the main organization behind the anti-war movement rallies – cheers go up at the news.

I’ll write more tomorrow. He was the greatest president since FDR, a man who did more than restore America’s self-confidence and defeat the great lie of Communism. He re-conjured our understanding of the central, animating role of liberty in human affairs. He saw that what was strangling America was the suffocation of big government and high taxation; he paid respect to religion but never turned Republicanism into what it is today – a repository for sectarian scolding; he saw that the use of military force was sometimes necessary to defeat tyranny; and that the greatest weapon against the creeping march of cynicism was self-confidence and optimism. With Margaret Thatcher and Karol Wojtyla, he changed the course of world history for the better. He was the towering figure of my adolescence, a beacon of hope in what was a brutally debilitating time. I’ll be lucky if I live to see another political leader of his stature, grace or fortitude. May he rest in the peace he brought to so many others, and in the joy he so richly deserves.

REAGAN II: “It takes time to recognize greatness and it sometimes appears in the oddest of forms. A B-actor from Hollywood, a cold fish, a man unknown even to his own children at times, a hack-radio announcer for General Electric, and easily the finest president of the last fifty years. When he dies, this country will go into shock. For Americans know in their hearts that this unlikely man understood the deepest meaning of their country in a way no-one else has done for a generation. He gave them purpose again, and in return they still give him love. For what it’s worth, let me now add my own.” – from my appreciation of the great man in 2001.

“Dear ‘Freak’ (your word not mine):
In response to your rhetorical question ‘what were opponents supposed to do?’
How about this option:
Accept the judges’ decision as good law-abiding citizens and go about their lives. It’s now been several weeks since gays were legally wed in Massachusetts and I have yet to find a single heterosexual marriage that has crumbled because of this historic event. I have yet to find ANY heterosexual whose life has been significantly altered in any way.
Yes, I really don’t need love to sanctify my love for my partner either. In fact, I don’t think any couple needs the sanctity of marriage to tell them what they already know. What I do need are the legal rights that come along with that “sanctity.” It seems to me you are confusing the terms “marriage” and “civil unions.” I could care less about the religious blessing and guess what —- we’re not invading people’s churches and demanding acceptance. This is a pure government, civil argument. So, if you need to separate “marriage” as a church function go right ahead. But please do not concede any civil rights for me and my partner.
One more thing – the following quote of your really irked me:
“If marriage is primarily about a family, then it excludes ALL gays, except those who inseminate and hire surrogates which I believe is drastically wrong when there are needy children who can be adopted.”
So, families with adopted children should not be considered a family? Infertile heterosexuals should be denied marriage? What exactly are you saying? How about infertile heterosexual couples who hire a surrogate to have children?”

The New York Times’ Edward Wong has provided some great reporting from Iraq but occasionally, he writes material that has one scratching one’s head. Here’s a classic:

“Still, there were some who derided this government, just like the old Governing Council, as a puppet of the American occupation. And all the Iraqis who were interviewed said they wanted the interim government to have full sovereign powers, a demand that is being debated at the United Nations. It is irreconcilable with the Bush administration’s position that the new officials be endowed with only very limited powers.”

Funny. I haven’t read anywhere of the Bush administrration severely restricting the ability of various Iraqis to run their own ministries, control their own police forces, use their own revenues, etc. Yes, there’s some delicate negotiation about the Iraqi control of other countries’ armed forces – but tha strikes me as far from the notion that the new rulers “be endowed with only very limited powers.” Wong’s piece is, in fact, very heartening for the Bush administration, which is why, perhaps, Wong felt it incumbent to find some way to spin it as a failure or as a conflict between Iraqis and Washington. So here’s the question: what does Wong mean by “very limited powers?” Could he or the New York Times elaborate?

I came across a very vivid blog by a photographer in Iraq, Stephanie Sinclair. Her despair at the chaos in Baghdad is moving, especially since she is no apologist for Saddam and a lukewarm war-supporter. What I think we may have missed is how the poor security situation made everything so much worse – made coalition soldiers jumpy and trigger-happy, which alienated Iraqis even more, which fed more distrust, and so on. The mistake was early on – when order was not restored after liberation, the borders were left unsealed, and mayhem allowed to unfold. We are still recovering from that early Rumsfeld-designed disaster. Then there is the impact of terrorism in Iraq itself:

I had the misfortune of spending the last two days stepping around pieces of dead bodies after two suicide bombers detonated themselves outside a police station and army recruiting facility in Iskandariyah and then in Baghdad. I can’t really begin to explain what it is like to see this type of pain and suffering and carnage. Even worse, I can’t even imagine what it must be like for the families that had to go to the morgue and sift through decapitated bodies, torsos without limbs, burned bits of clothing to identify their brother or son. I just sat there wondering how I would feel if I had to see someone I loved burnt and in pieces. It hurts to just write that and this was the reality for more than 100 families here in Iraq this week. To say it is sad is an understatement. One young guy in his 20s showed up at the morgue and was so upset he could barely stand because he was shaking so badly, overcome with fear and grief. Another young Iraqi police officer went into convulsions while watching the bodies being moved around, falling into a pile of burnt debris and garbage. This was worse than anything I saw during my experience covering the war. The most frightening part of all this is the local response to the explosions. At each scene Iraqi civilians accused the Americans of staging the attacks. In Iskandariyah hundreds of people were convinced that an American plane shot a missile at people applying for jobs the police station. Then they said that the police were cowards for cooperating with the Americans and started breaking the windows of one of the new police cars. Shortly afterwards a police officer shot about 30 gunshots in the air to disperse the crowd and of course at least one bullet hit a bystander and they had to be taken to the hospital. At the second site, the locals claimed the American soldiers set off the explosion and that is why all the soldiers were behind the concrete barrier when it happened, resulting in Iraqi casualties only. Of course this is crazy Iraqi talk, but it shows the lack to trust the local people have in the coalition forces here. Even Alaa started to wonder if this was as true and he is a college graduate who speaks three languages and has so far loved the Americans. The whole situation here is worrisome.

With any luck, the new government will ease this problem.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “The only way we ever found [Saddam] is finally somebody put enough pressure on enough people to find out that somebody had an idea where somebody might know somebody who might know somebody who would know where he might have been,” – Donald Rumsfeld, in classic form.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Here I am, your freak. A proud gay man who votes Republican more than not, and will be voting for Bush. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Federal Marriage Amendment because gay people suddenly think it’s fine for judges to impose their beliefs as law. They forced this. Instead of letting the American people decide (and there’s a good chance they’d have decided in our favor), they had people imposing their views, forcing people who were against it, feeling powerless, to play the same way. How can you not acknowledge this? I am not saying two wrongs make a right, I am saying this – what were opponents supposed to do? I don’t agree with the FMA (doesn’t seem like reason enough to amend the constitution) but it isn’t illegal and I understand where it’s coming from. And I don’t need marriage to sanctify my love for my partner. I think civil union benefits makes more sense, it isn’t separate but equal, gays and straights ARE different. If marriage is primarily about a family, then it excludes ALL gays, except those who inseminate and hire surrogates which I believe is drastically wrong when there are needy children who can be adopted. You can’t shove gayness down people’s throats. We’ve had to endure the ugly stereotype of trying to convert straights and now it seems to be realized. Instead of trying to convert them, we want to coopt an ancient tradition that really doesn’t fit homosexuals who don’t procreate and we are utterly intolerant of Christians who don’t break laws but think we’re going to Hell (instead of just saying to Hell with them). Just remember Andrew, there are different types of people out there in the world, please stop painting in such broad strokes. I hope you will print my letter so people can know that gays come in more flavors than they can imagine.” Well, I did. There’s more feedback on the Letters Page.

Hugh Hewitt directed me to this marine’s postings from the area around Fallujah. They’re fascinating. And the latest is particularly revealing:

As far as Falluja goes, we have not been allowed to get back in there with any real numbers yet.-Initially, it was confounding.- However, a very interesting dynamic has developed. Since we have stayed out of Falluja and focused elsewhere, the mujahadeen have had their run of the town.-As they have had no one to fight, they have turned their criminal instincts on the citizens.-The clerics who once were whipping these idiots into a suicidal frenzy are now having to issue Fatwas (holy decrees) admonishing the muj for extortion, rape, murder and kidnapping.-It is unfortunate for the “innocent people” of Falluja but the mujahadeen have betrayed themselves as the thugs that they are by brutalizing the civilians. There are, in fact, reports of rape, etc from inside the town. While the muj are thugging away inside the town, we are about 1/2 mile away paying claims, entering into dialogue and contracting jobs.-The citizens come outside the city for work and money and are treated like human beings.-They go back inside and enter a lawless hell. In short, the muj have done more to show the people what hypocrites they are in a few short weeks than we could have hoped for in a year. The result is more and more targetable intelligence.-If we are given the green light, we can really go to town on these guys (no pun intended).- However, as much as we would like to do just that, the optimal solution is to empower the Iraqis to take care of it themselves. That is precisely what we are doing.

Because of men like this – and my gut belief that people anywhere will choose freedom over slavery, given a real chance – I’m still a proud supporter of this war and an optimist about its future.

WHAT ROVE HATH WROUGHT: I’ve known David Catania for years, and count him as a friend and a bit of a hero. He ran as a white gay Republican in Washington D.C. for the city council and has been re-elected, and become something of a legend in the city. He’s an inclusive, tax-cutting, bureaucracy-terrorizing, rising political star. But he won’t be endorsing George W. Bush in November, for the obvious reason. So he’s been barred from being a delegate to the Convention. Here’s a money quote from an interview in Salon:

Whether or not a few [gay] leaders stay with the party until they drop dead isn’t the issue. The fact of the matter is, there ain’t no there there anymore. The constitutional amendment issue is kind of a watershed moment. It reminds me of the 1964 election, and this is why: In 1960 Richard Nixon won 26 percent of the black vote. We forget that it was 44 years ago, but the Republicans were still winning a quarter of the African-American vote. That went from 26 percent in 1960 to 12 percent in 1964. What made that happen? [Nominee Barry] Goldwater was opposed to the 1963 Civil Rights Act, and the African-American community viewed that as a betrayal. For 40 years, we have never as a party recovered from that.
In 2000 George Bush won 25 percent of the gay vote. You see the parallels? The president decided to trot out a constitutional amendment to remind us, even though we are already reminded daily, that we are second-class citizens. In case we harbored any illusions that we were equal, he wants to write this into the Constitution. He’ll be lucky if he gets 12 percent [of the gay vote] in this election.

12 percent? I’d say 5 percent. Not that Rove cares. There isn’t a pretense any more that gay people are even worthy of consultation in the Republican party. Catania exonerates Bush. I think he’s being too kind. I’ve no doubt that Bush wants to believe he’s a tolerant, nice guy; and I’m sure he conducts himself admirably with people of different backgrounds. But he does not even remotely understand the social revolution of the last two decades. He thinks gay people can be treated as they were in the 1950s and that’s a measure of tolerance. It’s this blindness that rankles. Who, for example, did Bush talk to about the constitutional amendment? Richard John Neuhaus. Did the president talk to a single gay person? Nope. Is there a single gay Republican or gay conservative willing to defend the constitutional amendment? I have yet to find one. I think David under-estimates the extent of the damage.

Here’s Clinton’s apparently subtle description of George W. Bush: “If you go back and read what (Bush) said in the campaign, he’s just doing what he’d said he’d do. You’ve got to give him credit for that.” Huh? Isn’t it the most remarkable fact about this president that he will be remembered primarily as a radical interventionist in foreign policy, while he campaigned in favor of moderate, realist isolationism? And wasn’t he supposed to be a “uniter, not a divider,” reaching out to the socially moderate center? Yet he has governed domestically as a member of the hard-core Christian right and polarized the country more deeply than even under Clinton. Sorry, Bill. Try another back-handed compliment.