THE UNHILLARY

A moment of silence, please, for the man who knew perfectly well what the correct interpretation of the role of First Lady was and executed it flawlessly – in pants. Denis Thatcher died yesterday. He became an iconic figure in Britain, had a brilliant parody of his letters published regularly in London’s “Private Eye,” and was known to be sometimes as colorful in his real life as in his satirists’ imagination:

During a visit to a village outside Delhi, the locals forced him to wear a vast pink turban. As he walked away, his headgear wobbling like a huge jelly, he was heard to mutter: “These blighters are trying to make me look like a bloody fool.” More humiliation came during a Commonwealth summit in Goa when the electricity failed as Sir Denis was shaving. Fellow heads of state staying in neighbouring chalets were suddenly confronted a man apparently frothing at the mouth and bellowing: “The buggeration factor is high and growing in this part of the world!” The letters were right about Sir Denis’s liking for a snort. Even at 80, he was imbibing gin “at an admirable rate”.

Here’s part of his friend Bill Deedes’ reminiscence:

[W]hen she was Secretary for Education, Margaret was seen one evening by the Permanent Secretary leaving the office early. She was going out, she explained, to buy bacon for Denis’s breakfast. There were, the Permanent Secretary assured her, plenty of people in the department who would be glad to do that for her. No, the bacon had to be just as he liked it, and only she knew what he liked.

I love that image of the Iron Lady shopping for bacon. Says a lot about her, I think. And about what marriage is really all about.

THE ARROGANCE OF SOME LIBERALS: Brad DeLong is sometimes a classic example of the arrogant liberal. He supports affirmative action and believes that individuals in 2003 bear a direct responsibility for those people who enacted slavery and made life a living hell for many black Americans in decades and centuries past. Fair enough. I think his point is strained and unconvincing but it’s a legitimate one. For my part, I don’t see why a young Korean immigrant should be denied a place in college to make way for an affluent, suburban black student who has lower scores. I simply don’t see how such a person can be held responsible for things done in the distant past by people in a distant country of which she had no knowledge. And I don’t see how subjecting a new citizen to racial discrimination makes past racial discrimination any better. But, look, people can disagree. But what DeLong says is that my more libertarian and individualistic viewpoint is simply a function of ignorance. He describes my indifference to a racially un-diverse university as follows: “I think that the politest possible response is that this demonstrates, more than anything else, that Andrew Sullivan is simply and totally clueless about what America is.” Am I being touchy here or is there a soupcon of nativist hostility in DeLong’s remark? Is DeLong aware of the millions of native-born Americans who agree with me – majorities in most polls? And then he concludes his self-righteous pirouette by accusing all those who disagree with him as somehow lacking in manhood! Here’s the beaut:

To accept one’s fair share of the collective responsibility for the evils of slavery and Jim Crow, and to do one’s part not to deny or to explain away to erase the marks it has left on our country’s African-American community, are burdens that every American who wants to be considered a man needs to stand up and bear.

Do we add a touch of homophobia to the nativism?

SCALIA’S MORALITY OF PREJUDICE

Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence vs Texas is, as usual, interesting and not quite as chock-full of animus toward homosexual dignity as in the past. It comes down to two arguments: that an assertion of “morality” is justification enough for any law anywhere, regardless of its rationality; and that a law that covers only same-sex sodomy is not discriminatory toward homosexuals. Both ideas strike me as wrong. On the first count, surely the government does need to provide some kind of reasonable justification for a law expressing “morality,” which doesn’t just rely on what people have always believed or always assumed. One reason that this law was struck down is because its supporters couldn’t come up with an argument that justified persecution of private sexual behavior, apart from the notion that stigmatizing gay sex was somehow good for families. Allowing sodomy for 97 percent of the population, while barring it for 3 percent cannot possibly be defended as a law designed to prevent or deter the immorality of sodomy. It was a law entirely constructed to stigmatize gay people. It had no other conceivable prupose. And when “morality” is simply a rubric under which to persecute a minority, then we don’t really have the imposition of morality at all. We have the imposition of a prejudice. At least the Catholic Church makes no distinction between heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sodomy. In fact, I know of no religious or moral tradition which makes the distinction that Texas law made until today. Scalia is not upholding any morality. He’s upholding prejudice. As to his notion that the law doesn’t single out gays because two straight guys getting it on would be criminalized as well, that’s like saying that a law banning Jewish religious services is not anti-Jewish since goyim could not conduct such services either. It’s the kind of sophistry you need to deny the obvious, hostile intent of the Texas law.

SCALIA’S INSIGHT: But he’s right about one thing. Once you acknowledge the dignity of gays as a social class, once you have conceded that their private sexual and emotional lives cannot be reduced to a single sexual act, once you have made the law equal with respect to the private sex lives of heteros and homos, the logic of same-sex marriage becomes hard to resist:

This reasoning leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Justice O’Connor seeks to preserve them by the conclusory statement that “preserving the traditional institution of marriage” is a legitimate state interest. But preserving the traditional institution of marriage is just a kinder way of describing the State’s moral disapproval of same-sex couples.

Of course, that precise moral disapproval of same-sex couples – not sex acts, mind you, but couples – is precisely the “morality” that Scalia purports to uphold. It isn’t a reasonable morality, since it allows the “sin” of sodomy for the vast majority of people but denies it only to people who have no non-sodomitic option in their sex lives. It’s a system of social stigmatization that has its own circular, prejudiced rationale. But getting rid of that incoherent prejudice does make marriage the obvious next step:

Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is “no legitimate state interest” for pruposes of proscribing that conduct; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense at neutrality) “when sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring”; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising “the liberty protected under the Constitution”? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, sinnce the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case “does not involve” the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of the Court.

Precisely. Equality under the law means something. And now, it inescapably means the right to marry – for all citizens and not just those with power.

THOMAS VERSUS SANTORUM

Again, it’s fascinating to see Clarence Thomas, a man I admire, take the trouble to point out that even though he voted with the minority on constitutional grounds, he is personally opposed to the law on political grounds:

If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.

This is the point Senator Santorum still won’t address. The reason for his silence is that he actually believes that the government’s policing of private sexual behavior is a good and important thing. Now we know how far out there he really is.

THE REBUKE TO SANTORUM

So the Supreme Court uses specifically the privacy argument to over-turn Bowers v Hardwick in a larger than expected 6 – 3 decision. It would be hard to find a more emphatic statement that gay men and women are a) human beings whose private lives deserve privacy and b) citizens who deserve the same treatment as everyone else under the law. A Reagan appointee, Anthony Kennedy, wrote the decision. I haven’t read it all yet so this is a preliminary take. But each day now, I can feel freedom dawning in this land again. The struggle of so many for so long is beginning to come true. What a privilege, what a joy, to be alive to witness it.

DEAN’S WHOPPER?

I didn’t see what many are calling a disastrous performance by Howard Dean on “Meet The Press,” but I know from observing him and debating him once that he’s an intemperate, arrogant bully. Will Saletan is onto something here. It’s a trait bad doctors have. They are used to being in such controlling positions vis-a-vis their patients that it goes to their heads. Good doctors resist such an obvious temptation. And then there’s Dean’s looseness with the truth. I’d say Fred Barnes scores a few hits with this column. Here’s one Dean quote Fred exposes: “Karl Rove and others have talked about going back to the McKinley era before there was any kind of social safety net in this country.” Now Karl Rove has talked about McKinley – but only, so far as I know, in respect to electoral campaign politics, not policy matters. Maybe one of the Dean blogs can put me right on this. Defend Dean’s statement; or somehow persuade me this isn’t an obvious deceptive smear. Email me, Deanies. Stand by your man. Or keep him honest.

WHERE ARE THEY – CTD: Josh Marshall responds to my recent arguments about the administration’s pre-war WMD rhetoric and arguments. He makes a decent point:

If the ‘better safe than sorry’ doctrine is what we’re now operating under, there shouldn’t be any need for exaggeration. The president might just have said, “They had chemical and biological weapons in the past. It’s a brutal regime that’s used these weapons in the past. They probably have them now. They might even be trying to develop nuclear weapons or strike up ties with al Qaida. We don’t have much evidence on these latter points. But the possibility is just too dire to chance. Better safe than sorry.”

Yet the administration seems to have understood that this wouldn’t quite cut it. So they tried something different. At best, they kept the ‘better safe than sorry’ reasoning to themselves. They decided it was better to be safe than sorry in their arguments to the American people. And, to make sure, they stripped all the ambiguity out of the evidence and removed it from the public debate.

Not quite. I absolutely support an investigation into whether anything was actually deliberately faked or egregiously spun. The reason is that I want us to be credible the next time we have to make such an argument. But so far, the evidence for blatant deception is extremely thin. Blair’s chief spin-meister denies any impropriety apart from one screw-up. And each day we hear of new clues as to the extent of Saddam’s WMD program. Another Watergate? I think that says more about the desperation of the Democrats and bitterness of the anti-war crowd than anything about this administration. But we’ll see, won’t we?

THE BEST COLUMN: On Sandra Day O’Connor’s logic is Mike Kinsley’s. If you haven’t already ready it, you should.

RELATED ADVERTIZING LINKS: You know opponents of equal marriage rights are in trouble when an editorial against them is followed by ads touting “Casual Civil Unions in Vermont” and “In Depth: Homophobia.” And in the Washington Times no less! The market trumps ideology every time.

THE NYT AGAIN: Yes, it’s better, although its coverage of the affirmative action decision bordered on the triumphal. But how about this headline: “Blair Offers More Troops for Iraq Despite Killing of 6 Britons.” Huh? Why the “despite.” Why not “because”? (It reminds me of the headline a while back that reported a decline in crime despite record numbers in prison. It simply didn’t occur to the Times’ editors that the relationship might be the reverse.) The answer is that the Times now has a rubric for the post-war Iraq situation. And it’s the same one as pre-war and during the war.In fact, it’s the same one forevery foreign engagement the United States ever gets involved in. Yes, it’s Vietnam! That’s the assumption of many of the liberal editors and reporters at the NYT: if we couldn’t make the war look like Vietnam, we’ll make the peace look like it. Expect more of the same.

HEADS UP: I’ll be on NPR’s Talk Of The Nation around 2pm EST to discuss the SCOTUS sodomy ruling.

A NEW SPLIT ON THE RIGHT

Two leading libertarians take on the neo-cons.

THE NEW BLOGGER: Of course, it sucks. For a week now, after an overhaul, every other post ends up being given some weird future date and cannot be published. The time zones appear to be random; and the publishing is completely erratic. C’mon, Google. Surely you can do better than make a decent thing impossible to use.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “When life hands you lemons, head down the hall, hide in the closet of your enemy, wait until they get a papercut, then leap out shouting BANZAI and crush the lemon in your hand right over the papercut. Save the peel. Go downstairs to the bar. Order a vodka. Use the peel. Yum!” – James Lileks today. He’s saying dark and gloomy things about some mysterious person who hates “The Bleat.” Just give us a name, James.

THE ‘INGRATITUDE’ OF THOMAS

It would be hard to find a more appalling example of racial animus than in Maureen Dowd’s column this morning. For some reason I guess I do understand, Clarence Thomas isn’t just opposed by many on the Left; he is hated. He is hated because he is, in Dowd’s extraordinary formulation, guilty of “a great historical ingratitude.” The good negroes, in Dowd’s liberal-racist world, are those grateful to their massas in the liberal hierarchy: they are grateful to Howell and Gerald and Arthur; and they know their place. For them to express the psychological torment of being advanced for racist reasons, to explain in graphic, brave and bold terms the complexity of emotions many African-Americans feel as ‘beneficiaries’ of racial preferences, is unacceptable. To describe such a person who has been courageous enough to put these feelings into a powerful dissent as “barking mad” is nothing short of disgusting. Yes, there are all sorts of psychological inconsistencies in Thomas’ journey. But that, in part, is the point! If Dowd supports “diversity” as a good thing in elite institutions, why isn’t it a good thing for one black Justice to contribute his own experience as part of a landmark judicial ruling? Of course I don’t know whether Dowd supports diversity in this sense. That would require her to argue something – of which she is apparently incapable. And then Dowd, of all people, complains that Thomas is more interested in his own personal dramas than “bigger issues of morality and justice.” When was the last time you read a Dowd column that grappled with “bigger issues of morality and justice”?

PRO-PHARMA

Another little coup for the big drug companies who, more than any other industry, have improved and saved the lives of countless people. You can now stop baldness and reduce your risk of prostate cancer. I gave up on Propecia a while back – I’ve gotten to like being bald – but now I’m thinking of taking it up again. What I particularly like about this new finding is that it conflates drugs for vanity and drugs for health. The distinction is not a scientific one; it’s cultural (like the distinction between medical and recreational marijuana). And one reason we discovered this therapeutic effect was because large numbers of men started taking finasteride in small doses for cosmetic reasons. In pharmaceuticals, all sorts of unexpected effects like this are discovered all the time (like the way in which Ecstasy has been found to help people with Parkinsons). The more we chip away at the puritanical stigma of taking pharmaceuticals for anything other than basic health, the happier and healthier a lot of people will be.

SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “The other day Bush said, ‘I would urge the Iranian administration to treat [the protesters] with the utmost of respect.’ Okay, but how about treating your own dissidents with some respect, Mr. President?” – Katrina Vanden Heuvel, the editor of the Nation, equating dissent in a democracy with dissidence in a theocracy.

THE G-WORD: The president finally says it.

THE DISSIDENTS: Pejman tells you more about Iran’s equivalent of the founding fathers.

RELIGIOUS SANITY: I loved this email posted by Jonah G. at NRO.

THE EU THOUGHT POLICE: Now they’re trying to ban all “sexual stereotyping.” Try that in Italy.

THE PERFECT CUPPA: It’s official now: how to make a cup of tea. Do not mention tea-bags. They’re vile.